


You, Me and Pringles

by toyhto



Category: Inception (2010)
Genre: Eames wants Arthur to pretend to be his boyfriend, Fake/Pretend Relationship, Fluff, Guess why Arthur agrees, M/M, Post-Canon, Romantic Comedy
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-09-19
Updated: 2020-10-06
Packaged: 2021-03-08 03:41:13
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 8
Words: 36,499
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/26549158
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/toyhto/pseuds/toyhto
Summary: Eames calls Arthur out of the blue and asks him to come immediately. He says it's an emergency.Turns out the emergency is that Eames needs Arthur to pretend to be his boyfriend.
Relationships: Arthur/Eames (Inception)
Comments: 134
Kudos: 423





	1. How Time Zones Work

**Author's Note:**

> Pringles is a cat. I thought I had stolen the idea somewhere and then I googled it and it turns out there _is_ a cat called Pringles. I'm terribly sorry, Pringles, but I'm using your lovely name in this story. And to the rest of you, I just want you to know that all similarity to actual cats, living or dead, is purely coincidental.
> 
> I'm also on [tumblr](http://toyhto.tumblr.com) but hopefully not all the time because I've got a story to write.

”Arthur,” Eames said on the phone, ”can you come here? It’s an emergency.”  
  
Arthur almost collided with a guy walking two golden retrievers and then had to jump aside because a group of middle-aged joggers was approaching him. His heart was beating fast and that probably wasn’t from the running. He hadn’t heard of Eames since the Fischer job had ended and that had been four months ago. “Where?” he asked, and two girls sitting on a bench nearby turned to look at him.  
  
“London,” Eames said.  
  
Arthur blinked. “London?”  
  
“Yeah,” Eames said, “yeah, I know, not your favorite place. But… please?”  
  
Arthur cleared his throat. He had nothing against London, it was just that on the few occasions that Eames had asked him if he was ever in the city, it had seemed safer to give Eames a firm ‘no’. He didn’t want to be pulled into doing something illegal in his free time when he already did illegal stuff for his job.  
  
“Arthur?” Eames said on the phone. There was something odd about his voice, like he was genuinely worried about something.  
  
Arthur thought about pointing out that he was in Chicago. Then he thought about it again. “Yeah, alright.”  
  
“Really?”  
  
“Yeah. But it’s going to take me at least twelve hours to get there. So if the emergency is something like you have a gun pointed at your head, maybe you should -”  
  
“No guns,” Eames said. Well, that was a relief. “I think. It’s alright. Just let me know when you’re here and I’ll pick you up at the airport.”  
  
Arthur swallowed. “Okay. Can you tell me what’s –“  
  
“I have to go now,” Eames said. “Thank you, darling, I love you. See you soon.” Then he hung up. Arthur stared at the phone in his hand for a few more seconds and then turned and started running back to his flat. Apparently, he was going to go to London right now.  
  
  
**  
  
  
Twelve hours later, he was at Heathrow, dragging his luggage and trying to avoid bumping into anyone. He hadn’t known what kind of an emergency Eames was talking about and also he was terrible at packing in a rush, so he had taken with him pretty much everything that had come to mind, except a few things that would have stopped him getting into the plane.  
  
On the other hand, maybe that would have been for the best. He didn’t have a clue what he was doing in London. He hoped it didn’t have anything to do with international crime but he would probably be disappointed, because really, wasn’t that the only thing that he and Eames had in common? They weren’t friends, not really. They just worked together sometimes, and Eames flirted with him and he tried to be cool about it. But that was all. And once in a while, he got weird text messages that he supposed were Eames drunk-texting him, because there was a lot of inappropriate stuff and the spelling was definitely British and also not very good. But otherwise, they didn’t keep in contact. Surely Eames would have someone else for whatever he thought he needed Arthur for. Surely -  
  
Arthur blinked. Eames was walking towards him through a group of Swedish tourists, saying _excuse me, excuse me, excuse me_ , while pushing people aside in a surprisingly smooth manner. He was wearing jeans and a t-shirt and a coat and his hair was messy and he looked really good.  
  
“Hello,” he said to Arthur and grabbed Arthur’s luggage. “ _Holy shit_ –“  
  
“You didn’t tell me what kind of an emergency it was,” Arthur said. He hated how defensive his voice sounded.  
  
“So you decided to bring everything?” Eames asked. “Well, that was good thinking. Come on, I’ve got a car parked outside. Are you alright? You look tired.”  
  
“It was seven in the evening when you called me,” Arthur said, following Eames as he walked through the group of Swedish tourists again. “Now it’s seven in the morning, only it’s not, it’s one in the afternoon here.”  
  
“I know how the time zones work,” Eames said and then frowned, “well, I have to google it every time I go somewhere. Didn’t you sleep on the plane?”  
  
“No.”  
  
Eames glanced at him. “You didn’t?”  
  
“No, I was…” He had been wondering why the hell Eames had called him and what kind of an emergency it was and what was the justice system in Britain like and if he ended up in prison, would they return him to the States, and if not, would his mother be allowed to visit him, and if yes, would he want her to, or would she only be more disappointed in him, and how could he handle that, and why couldn’t he stop thinking about how disappointed his mother in him, even now when he was thirty fucking years old and definitely an adult and shouldn’t have been so worried about what his mother thought of him, and besides, why the hell had Eames called _him?_ And then, when he had finally managed to stop thinking about all that for a second, he had started wondering why Eames had said _I love you_ on the phone. “I was reading a book,” he said. “It was very interesting.”  
  
“I bet,” Eames said, walking through the main doors. Outside, it was raining. “Sorry about the weather.”  
  
Arthur cleared his throat. “You sounded funny on the phone.”  
  
Eames glanced at him and then kept on walking. “Well, I was drunk.”  
  
“Drunk?”  
  
“Yeah.”  
  
“So, what kind of an emergency –“  
  
“I’ll tell you in a little bit,” Eames said. “Here’s my car.”  
  
Eames put Arthur’s luggage in the backseat and then hold the side door open for Arthur to get in. Arthur didn’t know what else to do – he certainly wasn’t going to turn around and fly back to Chicago – so he climbed onto the passenger seat. He leaned against the back of the seat as Eames closed the door. It all reminded him of something. Maybe of getting kidnapped. He tried the door and it was locked.  
  
“Sorry,” Eames said, getting into the car next to him, “I should get the central locking system fixed. Have you eaten anything?”  
  
“No,” Arthur said. He had tried to, on the plane. But he had been too busy thinking about everything at once.  
  
“Then we should get you something to eat,” Eames said and started driving. “You’re going to need energy.”  
  
Arthur bit his lip. “Aren’t you going to tell me what –“  
  
“Yeah, of course,” Eames said and rubbed the side of his nose. “So, what were you doing when I called you?”  
  
“I was running.”  
  
“ _Oh._ That makes sense. You sounded a little breathless.” Eames glanced at him. He hoped Eames would have kept his eyes on the road. “I thought maybe you were having sex. That would’ve been a little unfortunate.”  
  
“A little… why?”  
  
“No reason at all,” Eames said. “Where were you, by the way?”  
  
“In Chicago.”  
  
Eames nodded. He didn’t look surprised.  
  
“So,” Arthur said slowly, “I flew from Chicago to London because you called me drunk and said you had an emergency.”  
  
“Yeah,” Eames said. “That was very nice of you. I appreciate it a lot.”  
  
“Eames,” Arthur said and took a deep breath, “if this is something illegal, I just want you to know, that I really, really don’t want to get arrested, so if you could try to avoid –“  
  
“It’s nothing like that,” Eames said, “don’t worry.” Then he reached to pat Arthur on the knee. Arthur stared at his hand and then at his face after he pulled his hand away. “It’s nothing illegal,” Eames said quietly, “unfortunately,” and then cleared his throat. “So, food. What do you think of McDonald’s?”  
  
Arthur didn’t much care about McDonald’s. He always ate too much and felt slightly intoxicated for the next hour or so. “Alright.”  
  
“Great,” Eames said.  
  
  
**  
  
  
Half an hour later, Arthur had eaten too much and was feeling slightly intoxicated. Also, he was so tired he thought he might fall asleep at any second, if only Eames wasn’t sitting in the car next to him, watching him. Eames still hadn’t told him why he was here, and he was starting to lose hope that he would ever get to know that.  
  
“I need you to pretend that you’re my boyfriend,” Eames said.  
  
Arthur blinked. “What?”  
  
“Yeah,” Eames said and started inspecting his own fingernails.  
  
Arthur opened his mouth, then closed it, and then opened it again. “ _What?_ ”  
  
“I’m kind of sorry,” Eames said. “I know I probably shouldn’t have called you. But it was late at night and I was a bit drunk and reading all the texts I’ve sent you while I’ve been drunk, and your perfectly sensible responses to them, and then I thought, why not. It seemed like a good idea at the time. And I didn’t think you’d pick up. And to my defense, I was panicking a little. And also drunk.”  
  
“You said that already.”  
  
“Did I?” Eames cleared his throat. “So, well, anyway. Then I woke up this morning and realized that I had called you drunk at night and that you were now on the plane from Chicago to London to save me.”  
  
Arthur tried to understand what was happening. He really did, but he had eaten too much and besides, nothing Eames was saying made sense. “So, there’s no emergency.”  
  
“No, there is,” Eames said. He looked very uncomfortable now, which was frankly a little frightening. “I just don’t know if you brought the right kind of equipment for this kind of an emergency. My sister’s getting married in four days.”  
  
“Your sister’s –“  
  
“Yeah.”  
  
“Getting married –“  
  
“Yeah.”  
  
“That’s an emergency?” Arthur asked and bit his lip. “ _Shit._ Do we need to kidnap his spouse or something? Because I don’t really like kidnapping people in my free time, it’s so –“  
  
“Boring, I know,” Eames said. “No, it’s nothing like that. It’s just that yesterday, we were having a family dinner, all of us, and my sister asked me if I was sure I wouldn’t want to bring anyone with me to the wedding. And they were all there, my whole family, including my mother. I know that I’m thirty-four years old and kind of an adult and I shouldn’t be too upset about the fact that my mother’s disappointed at me, but I can’t help it, and how stupid is that?”  
  
“Very stupid,” Arthur said.  
  
“Yeah,” Eames said, “yeah, it is. But there she was, looking at me sadly as if she was thinking about how tragic it is that I’m living my life alone. And I couldn’t exactly tell her that actually, half of the gay men in the international dreamshare crime circles would like to fuck me and a few straight men would also fuck me under the right circumstances.”  
  
“I don’t think that would’ve helped much,” Arthur said and then blinked. “Why would you fuck someone straight?”  
  
“Sometimes I get lonely,” Eames said. “So, anyway, the next thing I realized was that I had just told everyone that actually, I have a boyfriend.”  
  
“You didn’t.”  
  
“Yeah, I know, that’s so stupid and I know you would’ve never done it.”  
  
Arthur had, in fact, done that once. But he had solved the situation by taking a sudden trip to Canada and sending his mother a postcard saying that he and his very real boyfriend had sadly broken up. When he had seen her again, she hadn’t mentioned the boyfriend.  
  
Eames cleared his throat, squeezing the wheel. “Then she said, _oh, is it new?_ And I said, _no. We’re actually engaged._ ”  
  
They stopped at the red light. Arthur realized he was staring at Eames again. He pulled his gaze away and tried to look cool. “You told her you’re engaged.”  
  
“Yeah,” Eames said. “And then she said, _that’s very nice, Eames, what’s his name_ , and I said, _Arthur._ ”  
  
Arthur let out some kind of a voice that he hoped might have been described as a surprised inhale. He felt like someone had hit him on the face with a wet glove.  
  
“Sorry,” Eames said in a very quiet voice. “I panicked. It was the first name that came into my mind But the good thing is that you don’t need to change your name.”  
  
Arthur swallowed. “You want me to pretend that we’re engaged?”  
  
“Yes,” Eames said, glancing at him. “Also, we’ve lived together for two years and we have a cat called Pringles.”  
  
“That’s a terrible name,” he said. “I like cats, though.”  
  
“So does my fiancé, Arthur,” Eames said. “You’re going to be perfect, darling. And I’m going to owe you so much.”  
  
“Just so that I’m understanding this right,” Arthur said slowly, trying not to think about how Eames had once again called him _darling._ The other thing he was trying not to think about was the word _fiancé._ “You want me to meet your family and tell them we’re together.”  
  
“You don’t need to tell them that, they already know. But, yeah.”  
  
“But you want to pretend that we’re together.”  
  
“Yeah.”  
  
“Eames,” he said slowly, “I’m not very good at acting. Especially not outside dreams.”  
  
“Don’t worry,” Eames said. “You can do what you normally do. Just roll your eyes at everything I say. It’ll be perfect. We’ll look like an old married couple.”  
  
“But we’re only engaged.”  
  
“Yeah. Our wedding’s going to be at summer. I should probably tell you the date, in case it comes up in a conversation.”  
  
Arthur cleared his throat. He was feeling oddly calm about all this. It reminded him of the times he had been in a mortal danger and had only panicked about it afterwards. “Shouldn’t we have a story or something? About how we met and all that? So that if someone asks, we aren’t going to be saying completely different things, like if I say that we met online and you say that we met in a book club.”  
  
“We didn’t meet in a book club,” Eames said. “I’m in the same book club with my mother, so that wouldn’t work. But yeah, we should come up with a story. We have one and a half hours before we’re meeting my sister and her spouse.”  
  
Arthur opened his mouth. “One and a –“  
  
“That’s why I thought you should eat something beforehand,” Eames said, “so you can have a drink if you want and you still won’t tell them everything about my criminal hobbies. Anyway, here we are.”  
  
Eames parked the car at the side of the street. Arthur looked around.  
  
“This is our house,” Eames said, got out of the car and took Arthur’s luggage from the backseat. “We’ve been living here in Camden Hill for two years now. And if anyone asks you how much we paid for the house, just laugh and start talking about something else.”  
  
Arthur climbed out of the car. In front of them, there was a white brick house that looked like it was at least a hundred years old and big enough that Arthur’s whole family could live in there. Eames was walking to the front door with Arthur’s luggage. Arthur rushed after him.  
  
“What –“  
  
“The lock is a little tricky sometimes,” Eames said, opening the door and walking straight in. “I’ll show you later. I think you’re going to want to have a shower now. Do you mind if I come in with you? We could plan our strategy while you’re showering. There’s a shower curtain, so you don’t need to worry about me seeing your bits.”  
  
Arthur wasn’t sure if Eames seeing his bits was what he was worrying about right now.  
  
“Oh,” Eames said and nodded at the black cat that had appeared in the doorway. “That’s Pringles. She can be a little shy at first, so don’t be offended.”  
  
“That’s –“  
  
“Our cat, yeah.”  
  
The cat was lovely.  
  
“Are you actually living here?” Arthur asked, following Eames through the rooms. There seemed to be plenty of them.  
  
“Yeah,” Eames said and put Arthur’s luggage on the orange sofa that also had an empty-looking box of chocolate biscuits and a sweater on it. “I mean, this is where I live when I’m in England. Are you ready for the shower?”  
  
Arthur didn’t think he’d be ready for anything ever again in his life. “Isn’t this house a little…”  
  
“Messy? Sorry about that. I would’ve tidied it up this morning before you came, but I was busy trying to sober up.”  
  
“No,” Arthur said and cleared his throat, “I meant… this is _big._ ”  
  
“Oh,” Eames said, turning to him, “oh, right. I should tell you something. I’m quite rich.”  
  
He blinked. “Yeah. I know. You’re the most well-payed forger in the dreamshare.”  
  
“I didn’t mean that kind of rich,” Eames said, “the kind of rich where you get your money from honest work.” He paused. “The kind where you get your money from _work_. I meant the other kind of rich.”  
  
Arthur stared at him.  
  
“My family managed to acquire a dozen of tea plantations in India in the nineteenth century,” Eames said, rubbing the side of his nose. “I don’t feel very good about that so I try not to think about it. Now we own just a few buildings, I think. And a half of a company that specializes in locks.”  
  
“In locks –“  
  
“That’s why I’m very good at picking them,” Eames said and grinned. “Anyway, it’s good that this came up, so you will have… an hour and fourteen minutes to get used to the idea before you meet my sister.”  
  
“Eames,” Arthur said slowly. Maybe what he should have been doing right now was that he should have been waiting for a taxi to take him back to the airport, back to Chicago where he could sit on his sofa, play something violent on the computer and think about whether he should try online dating again or not.  
  
“Here’s the bedroom,” Eames said, opening the door to the next room, “and here’s the ensuite. Take a shower. I’ll make you coffee so you’ll look like you’re half-awake when you meet my sister.”  
  
Arthur let himself be pushed into the ensuite. Then he took off his clothes, got into the shower, switched on the water, and listened to Eames whistling while he was apparently making coffee. A little later, Eames came to the doorway, told Arthur he couldn’t see Arthur’s dick from there so there was nothing for Arthur to be worried about, and asked what Arthur thought about them having met in a gay bar. It wasn’t very exciting but everyone would believe it and wouldn’t ask too many questions.  
  
“That’s okay,” Arthur said from the shower.  
  
“Great,” Eames said. “What about Bar Soho?”  
  
“Sounds good,” Arthur said. He had never been to a gay bar in London.  
  
“Good.” Eames paused. “You’ve never been there, right?”  
  
“Yeah, no, I haven’t.”  
  
“I’ll take you there later, if you want. For research. So, let’s say we met in a bar five years ago.”  
  
“Five years? Isn’t that a bit…” Actually, it was exactly for how long Arthur had known Eames. “Okay.”  
  
“I wasn’t looking for anything,” Eames said, “but then I saw you and thought that you were incredibly cute, and you saw me and thought that I was full of myself but also very good-looking. So, I tried to flirt with you, and you told me to fuck off but nicely, and I did, because I’m a gentleman. But then later that evening, we ended up talking a little and…” He paused. “What are your thoughts about having sex at the first date?”  
  
Arthur cleared his throat. “I don’t think it’s a date if we just randomly meet in a bar.”  
  
“No, I suppose you’re right.”  
  
“But we can have sex. I don’t mind.”  
  
“Alright,” Eames said. He sounded delighted. “So, we went back to your place and had sex and you thought I’d sneak out in the morning, but I didn’t. Actually, I refused to leave. Probably I was just sleeping in your bed and you wanted to get up already, so you did, and then you made coffee and breakfast and I was still asleep. And then when you finally woke me up, I drank your coffee and ate your breakfast and then stayed on your sofa, watching _The_ _Simpsons_ with you.”  
  
“I hate _The Simpsons._ ”  
  
“Okay, _Game of Thrones_ then.”  
  
“It was five years ago. _Game of Thrones_ wasn’t airing yet.”  
  
“You’re very thorough about the details,” Eames said, but his voice sounded like he was smiling. “Do you think we should discuss what kind of sex we had?”  
  
“Maybe not,” Arthur said. “They aren’t going to want to hear about that anyway.”  
  
“You don’t know my sister,” Eames said, “but yeah, we can tell them that you’re shy about stuff like that and then change the subject.”  
  
“Yeah.”  
  
“And it’s not like you aren’t actually a little shy.”  
  
“Fuck off.”  
  
“No, I like it,” Eames said. He sounded genuine. Arthur froze for a second. “Anyway, we met at a bar and then you just couldn’t get rid of me anymore. But you were living… where do you want to live?”  
  
“I think Chicago is fine.”  
  
“How dull,” Eames said, “I was thinking about Timbuktu. So, you’re living in Chicago, and I’m kind of travelling around the world because I’m a professional online poker player – that’s actually what I tell my family, so stick to the story – so we don’t think we have much chance at a relationship. And I haven’t actually been anyone’s boyfriend since I was in university, so I’m not feeling very confident at that department. But I can’t stop thinking about you. Sometimes we meet and have dinner and sex, and for the rest of the time I’m trying not to think about you, but that’s not working out and I send you a lot of texts when I’m drunk.”  
  
“And you don’t sign them,” Arthur said slowly, “but I can tell that they’re from you, because they’re terrible.”  
  
Eames laughed. “That’s perfect. You’re good at this. But why don’t you have my number?”  
  
Arthur cleared his throat. “Because I always delete it. So that I wouldn’t start thinking that you’re going to call me. But that doesn’t help, because I’ve already memorized it without meaning to.”  
  
“You’re a romantic, then,” Eames said, sounding surprised. “Okay, that’s good. What then? So, we’ve had this thing going on for… let’s say two years. Then, three years ago, I call you and you pretend you don’t recognize my voice immediately, and I ask you where you are, and you’re at home in Chicago, and I tell you that I happen to be in Chicago too, because there’s an international online poker tournament in there.”  
  
“Why is it in Chicago if it’s online?”  
  
“It’s a plot hole,” Eames said, “but no one will notice. Anyway, I knock on your door and you’re surprised but let me in, and I lose the tournament but win your heart.”  
  
Arthur bit his lip.  
  
“Too cheesy?”  
  
“A little.”  
  
Eames was quiet for a moment. “How’s your shower going?”  
  
“I’m ready,” Arthur said. “But I can’t come out because you’re standing right there.”  
  
“Just do it,” Eames said. “After all, you’ve been living with me for two years.”  
  
Arthur thought about arguing, but Eames had a point. They even had a cat together. He pushed the shower curtain aside and stepped out of the shower, and Eames looked down at his crotch and then back at his face again.  
  
“I didn’t think you’d do it,” Eames said, smiling. Arthur absolutely didn’t have a soft spot for Eames’ smile, and if he did, he was very good at dealing with it.  
  
“Fuck off,” he said, took the towel that was hanging on the wall, and walked straight past Eames to the bedroom. His luggage was still in the living room, so he went there, drying himself with the towel on his way. The cat was sitting on his luggage, so he picked her up to put her somewhere else, but she started purring and he had to sit down on the sofa with the cat in his lap. A moment later, he realized that Eames was looking at him from the doorway.  
  
“I’m trying to get my clothes,” Arthur said, petting the cat.  
  
“I can see that,” Eames said. He sounded a little distracted.


	2. A Piece of Chocolate Cake

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> _"Quickly, look like you’re in love with me."_

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Another chapter! My dudes, it has recently turned out that this story IS going to have at least one Explicit sex scene. Just not today.

“You must be Arthur,” Eames’ sister said, and Arthur’s first instinct was to deny it. But he had come here in Eames’ car and Eames was standing very close to him, so his chances at getting away were pretty low. Also, it was difficult to think about an escape plan while he could smell Eames’ cologne.  
  
He told Eames’ sister that yes, he was Arthur. He sounded a little worried about that but maybe Eames’ sister couldn’t tell.  
  
“Nice to meet you,” Eames’ sister said, hugged him and then shook hands with him. “I’m Emma. And this is –“  
  
“I’m Ruby,” said Eames’ sister’s girlfriend, shook hands with Arthur and then hugged him, too. “And I’m going to need your phone number. We need to support each other, since we’re both marrying into this family.”  
  
Arthur cleared his throat.  
  
“It was a long flight,” Eames said and placed his hand on the low of Arthur’s back. Arthur froze and Eames pulled his hand away. “Are we going to order?”  
  
They were in a small café not far from Eames’ house. Eames ordered himself an espresso and a glass of whiskey and the same for Arthur, and Arthur said he could pay for himself. Eames said he didn’t need to, and he said that he could and he would, and Eames said that he was being stubborn, and he said that well if he was so stubborn, maybe Eames shouldn’t have asked him to come here. And then he remembered that Eames’ sister and her fiancée where _right there_ and that he was supposed to be Eames’ boyfriend.  
  
“I can see why he likes you,” Emma said and winked at Arthur.  
  
“Just let me pay,” Eames said. “I told you I’m rich.”  
  
“Fuck you,” Arthur said as quietly as he could and then paid for himself. Also, he didn’t take the whiskey. He absolutely didn’t want to get drunk right now, because if he did, he would end up saying something very stupid, like admitting that he actually liked Eames a lot.  
  
He took his espresso and followed Eames to the table.  
  
“Sorry,” Eames said in a quiet voice. The girls were still at the counter, waiting for their drinks.  
  
He shook his head. “This is just weird.”  
  
“Yeah, I know.”  
  
“I haven’t been anyone’s… anything for a long time.”  
  
“Well, they think you’re perfect for me, so this is going well,” Eames said. “We don’t need to stay for long. Just kick me in the leg if you want to leave and I’ll figure out something.”  
  
“Won’t they see that I’m kicking you in the leg for no reason?”  
  
“Maybe you could make it look like foreplay.”  
  
“And what if I have another reason to kick you?”  
  
“Why would you want to kick me?” Eames asked and then frowned. “They’re coming back. Quickly, look like you’re in love with me.”  
  
Arthur kicked him in the leg.  
  
The first ten minutes the conversation made Arthur wish he wouldn’t have agreed to this. Emma seemed to want to know everything about him and he didn’t know how much he was supposed to tell her, and Eames was drinking his whiskey and looking nervous, and that only made Arthur more nervous. And then Ruby talked something about a big house in the countryside and a family with a posh surname, and it took Arthur a moment to realize that they were talking about Eames’ family. After that, Arthur felt a little better. Now that he knew Eames’ name, he could find out so many things he hadn’t before. Then Emma started telling him a story about one of the many stupid things Eames had done as a teenager.  
  
“Please, don’t,” Eames said. “Arthur doesn’t need to hear this.”  
  
“I definitely need to hear this,” Arthur said. This was actually perfect. He would get to know more about Eames without having to work for it.  
  
“Well, maybe I should save something for later,” Emma said. “And I want to know how you guys met. Can you believe that Eames hasn’t told us anything about you?”  
  
“Yeah, I can,” Arthur said.  
  
“I’m a very private person,” Eames said and sipped his whiskey.  
  
“But I’ve been thinking for a long time that he’s keeping something from us,” Emma said. “I thought it had something to do with his job. He started playing online poker a long time ago, so I’ve been thinking that maybe he’s quit that and is doing something else for a job now and just hasn’t told us.” She paused. “Maybe something dull. He could be a data analyst or something. He’s always been good with numbers.”  
  
Arthur glanced at Eames. Eames smiled at him briefly.  
  
“But once or twice I thought that maybe it’s not that,” Emma said. “Maybe it’s got nothing to do with his career. Maybe he’s in love with someone.”  
  
“Please,” Eames said, sighing, “I’m not in –“  
  
Arthur kicked him in the leg.  
  
“Of course I’m in love with Arthur,” Eames said without blinking. “But you didn’t know that.”  
  
“Do you remember the last summer, when we were in France?” Emma asked. “And after dinner we went to the garden, and we were both a little tipsy, and I told you that I was thinking about proposing to Ruby?”  
  
“She didn’t get it done,” Ruby said to Arthur. “So I had to propose to her.”  
  
“And you were texting someone,” Emma said to Eames, “and I asked you who it was, and you said _no one_.”  
  
“Well,” Eames said slowly, “it was no one. And besides, I don’t remember that.”  
  
“And then you blushed.”  
  
“I didn’t blush,” Eames said and glanced at Arthur.  
  
“It was Arthur,” Emma said, grinning, “wasn’t it?”  
  
Eames cleared his throat. “Yeah. Yeah, it was Arthur.”  
  
  
**  
  
  
Arthur kicked Eames’ leg six times, and somehow Eames realized that it was the sixth kick that finally meant that Arthur wanted to leave. By then, Emma and Ruby had talked about their plans for the honeymoon, about how stressing it was to plan the wedding, about British politics, the weather, dogs, Christopher Nolan and raincoats. Eames had told a very funny story about the time he and Arthur had been on a vacation in Portugal and had decided to go camping, and Arthur had laughed with everyone else until he had remembered that the story was about him and it hadn’t actually happened. He hadn’t woken up next to Eames in a tent full of water. That stung a little deeper than it should have.  
  
Eames got himself another whiskey and Arthur asked him if he could bring with him another espresso, too, and something to eat, maybe a piece of chocolate cake. Eames blinked at him and then smiled and said that yes, he could, and when he came back with half of the cake, Arthur didn’t offer to pay for it. A little later, he was telling Emma about how irritating it was that Eames never seemed to take anything seriously but that when Eames actually _did_ something, he always did it well – and how was that even possible, when he looked like he wasn’t even trying. While he was still talking, Eames touched the back of his hand on the table. He cleared his throat. Eames brushed his fingertips against Arthur’s knuckles and then drew his hand away, and Arthur finished the story and silently told himself to calm the fuck down.  
  
So, when he kicked Eames in the leg for the sixth time, he was already feeling quite tired. That was probably partly because of the sleep-deprivation and partly because of all the other reasons.  
  
“I think we should go,” Eames said to Emma and Ruby. “Arthur flew here from the States this morning and we didn’t have much time alone before we came to meet you.”  
  
Emma and Ruby laughed. Arthur tried to smile but there was something stuck in his throat, possibly chocolate cake. He hugged both women as a goodbye and then, when he turned to follow Eames out of the café, Eames took his hand. He took a deep breath and told himself that this was normal. He was pretending to be Eames’ boyfriend. Fake boyfriends held each other’s hand all the time. And it wasn’t like this was his first time, anyway. He didn’t remember when he had held hands with someone but he was certain that had happened at some point in his life.  
  
They walked out of the building and on the street, Eames let go of his hand. “Sorry.”  
  
“No,” Arthur said and then coughed a little, because his voice came out oddly hoarse. “You don’t need to… that’s fine.”  
  
“Alright,” Eames said, pushing his hands into his pockets. “So, you don’t mind holding hands.”  
  
“Of course not,” he said. “Thanks for the cake, by the way.”  
  
“I hope you liked it,” Eames said. “It was pretty expensive.” Then he grinned.  
  
They drove home – no, they drove to _Eames’ house,_ and there Arthur waited as Eames opened the door and let him in. The cat was on the hallway. He picked her up and tried to go to the living room, but apparently he took the wrong turn, because he ended up in a room full of old armchairs. All of them seemed to have something wrong with them.  
  
“It’s just a hobby,” Eames said from behind his back. “Are you hungry?”  
  
“Not exactly,” he said. He had recently eaten a huge piece of chocolate cake. Also, he was wondering if Eames’ hobby was to repair armchairs or to break them. He wouldn’t have known which one to guess.  
  
“Well, I’m hungry,” Eames said. “I’m going to the kitchen.” Arthur followed him, because there seemed to be a good chance that he’d never find the kitchen on his own.  
  
The kitchen, it turned out, was surprisingly small and not very modern, and Eames opened all the cupboard doors and inspected the content of the shelves with his arms crossed over his chest, until finally he sighed and pulled out a box of cereal. He sat down at the table and Arthur sat down across from him. He was still holding the cat, but she seemed happy to settle in his lap.  
  
“She likes you,” Eames said, pointing at the cat with the spoon. “I should’ve known that. She’s got a good taste in men.”  
  
Arthur cleared his throat. “They were nice.”  
  
“Emma and Ruby?” Eames glanced at him. “Yeah, they are. Ruby’s great.”  
  
“I suppose they’ve been together for a long time.”  
  
“Not that long.” Eames stuffed his mouth full of cereal, chewed on it for a while and then washed the cereal down with milk. It should have been unattractive. “Emma actually had a little bit of a hard time coming out. I don’t know why. But when she met Ruby, she fell in love so hard that there was nothing to be done about it. That’s what she told me.”  
  
“Sounds nice,” Arthur said.  
  
“Sounds terrifying,” Eames said and cleared his throat. “You’re gay, right?”  
  
Arthur nodded.  
  
“I thought so. I don’t know why. I think you never told me which label you like to use.”  
  
“I’m gay,” he said. He didn’t know why exactly they were talking about this, but he didn’t know why he was in London, pretending to be Eames’ boyfriend, either. And it seemed that talking with Eames was easier when he had a cat purring in his lap.  
  
“Yeah,” Eames said and smiled a little. “Well, I’m glad that you aren’t straight, because that would’ve been awkward at this point. Since we’re about to get married and everything.”  
  
“You -,” Arthur started and cleared his throat.  
  
“I never thought that gender makes any difference,” Eames said, shrugging. “Maybe it’s a forging thing. I feel like it’s just something we put on.”  
  
“It’s not, really. It’s not only that.”  
  
“Yeah, I know. I can forge a woman but I’m not a woman when I’m doing that.” Eames looked at him. “I don’t like labels. Does it bother you?”  
  
“No,” he said. Eames looked at him for a while longer and then went back to eating, and the silence that followed felt soft and comfortable, or maybe Arthur was about to fall asleep. It was barely an evening yet, but he supposed he had been awake for almost thirty hours now. “So,” he said when he was starting to be afraid that he might fall asleep at any second, “what else do you need me to do?”  
  
“What do you mean, what else?”  
  
“I met your sister and her fiancée. What else?”  
  
“Oh,” Eames said and glanced at him sharply. “You meant that.”  
  
“I suppose you want something, because you haven’t sent me back to Chicago yet.”  
  
Eames chewed on his lower lip. “I shouldn’t have called you.”  
  
“What?” Arthur asked. Pringles complained in his lap and he kept on petting her, but his hands didn’t seem steady.  
  
“It was a shitty thing to do,” Eames said, not looking at him, “saying that it was an emergency, making you come here just to… be my boyfriend.”  
  
Arthur swallowed. He was angry at Eames. That was what he was feeling. He was angry because Eames _had_ called him and _had_ asked him to come here, and now Eames was talking as if he might just take it all back and decide that he didn’t need Arthur anymore. _Arthur_ didn’t want to be here. _Arthur_ didn’t want to pretend to be anyone’s boyfriend. He was doing this for _Eames._  
  
“Sorry,” Eames said. “If you want to leave, I totally understand. And obviously I’m going to pay your plane ticket.”  
  
“I don’t need your money,” Arthur said. He didn’t sound as calm as he wanted but to hell with that. “You called me and I’m here. You can’t just decide that you don’t want me anymore.”  
  
Eames blinked at him and stopped eating the cereal, thank god. The way he was chewing them was weirdly distracting. “Of course I _want_ you,” he said. “Who _wouldn’t_ want you? But maybe you have better things to do than hang out with me and meet my family.”  
  
“I don’t,” Arthur said quickly, “I don’t have anything better to do. Absolutely not.”  
  
Eames stared at him. “Alright, then.”  
  
“Yeah.”  
  
“So you don’t really mind being here and pretending to be my boyfriend.”  
  
“No,” Arthur said, even though his voice was still coming out angrier than he wanted it to, “no, I don’t mind it at all. I can be your boyfriend if you want me to. Just tell me what to do.”  
  
“Well,” Eames said, eyeing him, “obviously I’d like you to come to the wedding with me. I’ve already told everyone that you’re coming.”  
  
“Great,” Arthur said.  
  
“And I’d like you to meet my mother.”  
  
Arthur nodded. He just hoped Eames’ mother wouldn’t be as disappointed at him as his own mother seemed to be.  
  
“And maybe you could meet my grandmother,” Eames said. “She’s created at least five online dating profiles for me. I’m a little worried because she’s getting a lot of dick pics now and she’s got a heart condition. It’d be good if she saw that I have a real boyfriend and she can stop trying to get me one.”  
  
“Yeah,” Arthur said, “of course I’ll meet her.”  
  
Eames nodded.  
  
Arthur stared at him.  
  
“That’s quite a lot,” Eames said. “Maybe I should give you some free time, too. You know, from being my boyfriend.”  
  
“I don’t need free time from being your boyfriend,” Arthur said.  
  
“Okay,” Eames said very slowly. “Then, maybe we should go on a date.”  
  
“Yeah,” Arthur said and then blinked. “What?”  
  
“To make all this more convincing,” Eames said, making a vague gesture at the kitchen and at the cat in Arthur’s lap. She seemed to have fallen asleep. “And there’re a few places in London I think you might like.”  
  
“Don’t take me to a strip club. Please.”  
  
“Shit,” Eames said, smiling slowly. “Well, there’re other places too. What’s your ideal date like?”  
  
“I don’t know,” Arthur said. The story Eames had told Emma and Ruby had sounded pretty great, the one in which he had gone camping with Eames. That was a little odd, though, because he had thought he hated camping. “You can decide.”  
  
“Try to be a little imaginative, darling,” Eames said.  
  
Arthur looked at him. “But what if I don’t want anything special?”  
  
“I find that hard to believe,” Eames said, “but that’s alright. Obviously. Just tell me.”  
  
“We could go to a movie,” Arthur said and then frowned. “Well, not a movie. A movie is not a good idea for a date. Maybe we could go to a museum. Or an art gallery. But not anything too modern. I like photography, though. And after that, we could go for a dinner, but not McDonalds. Not anything too fancy, either. But I want dessert. And then, after that, we could…”  
  
“Yeah?”  
  
“We could come back here,” he said, his voice suddenly coming out thin.  
  
Eames bit his lip. “Yeah? You’d come home with me after our date?”  
  
“You already asked me how I feel about sex on the first date,” Arthur said and cleared his throat. He wasn’t exactly sure what he was talking about anymore.  
  
“Yeah,” Eames said slowly, “and you said you don’t have anything against it.”  
  
“I don’t.”  
  
“Okay. Good to know.”  
  
“Yeah.”  
  
“In theory,” Eames added, but it sounded like a question.  
  
Arthur swallowed. Oh, _shit,_ maybe Eames thought Arthur was making a pass at him and was trying to figure out how to nicely turn him down. “In theory,” he said. “Of course.”  
  
“Of course,” Eames said, blinking. He finished eating his cereal, and Arthur didn’t stare at his mouth.  
  
  
**  
  
  
They watched three episodes of _Game of Thrones_ before Arthur fell asleep on the sofa. He woke up when everyone on the screen seemed to be shouting and crying and there was blood everywhere and a few people were already dead, and Eames was watching him with an odd look in his eyes.  
  
“What’s the time?” he asked.  
  
“It’s not even nine yet,” Eames said. “Do you want to watch something less boring?”  
  
There was a very bloody murder happening on the screen. “Maybe I should just go to bed.”  
  
Eames nodded. “Sure. I have a bed. I have a lot of beds. I have a guestroom.” He frowned. “I have four guestrooms.”  
  
“Alright,” Arthur said.  
  
Eames stared at him. He stared at Eames. He didn’t remember the last time he had been this tired, except for when he had been addicted to _Grand Theft Auto._ He kind of had a feeling that Eames was trying to ask him something, but he didn’t have a clue what it was, and he generally didn’t like admitting that he didn’t know something, so he kept his mouth shut.  
  
“Okay,” Eames said, “I’ll just put you in one of the guestrooms.”  
  
“Yeah,” Arthur said.  
  
“I have to find clean bed sheets fist,” Eames said. “I haven’t done laundry in a while. Well, of course I have sheets in my bed, but that’s not going to help you.”  
  
“I could just sleep on the sofa,” Arthur said. He didn’t want Eames to think that he was being picky. Also, he was pretty sure that if the people on the television had stopped shouting and dying for a second, he would have fallen asleep again, now and here.   
  
“You aren’t going to sleep on the sofa,” Eames said and stood up. “I’ll figure out something.”  
  
Arthur waited on the sofa until Eames woke him up again, shaking him by the shoulders. Eames had switched off the television. He asked if Arthur had a toothbrush with him, and Arthur said he had but that he wasn’t going to brush his teeth. He was too tired for that. Eames said that that was disgusting, but he said it in a very nice tone, and then he grabbed Arthur’s shoulders, pulled him up onto his feet and took to a room next to his own bedroom. That was nice. There was a bed in the room, and Arthur walked to it, lay down and then tried to take off his trousers.  
  
“Do you want me to help?” Eames asked from the doorway.  
  
“No,” Arthur lied. Of course he wanted Eames to help. He had wanted Eames to help him like that for _years_ , only he wasn’t supposed to be thinking about that, because it would never happen, and he didn’t want to be sad. “Fuck off,” he told Eames. “Thank you. For everything. And good night.”  
  
“You flew to London for me,” Eames said, “so thank _you_ , I suppose. Good night, darling.”  
  
 _Darling_ , Arthur thought, when he was dozing off. _Darling._


	3. A Broken Tooth

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> _“So, Arthur, what are your intentions with my son?”_

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Today we meet Eames' mother.

“So, Arthur,” Eames’ mother said, “what are your intentions with my son?”  
  
Arthur glanced at Eames. Eames was reading the menu with a concentrated look on his face.  
  
“I’m just kidding,” Eames’ mother said, leaning back in her chair and smiling widely. “I hear that you’ve set the date, so your intentions seem quite clear. I just couldn’t help myself, I’m sorry, dear, you look so shocked -“  
  
“Try to behave,” Eames said to his mother, his eyes still on the menu. “What will happen to me if you scare Arthur off?”  
  
“Oh, darling, he loves you,” Eames’ mother said to Eames, “I can see it in his eyes.”  
  
Arthur looked down at his own hands.  
  
“But yeah, you’re right,” Eames’ mother said. “We should talk about something casual first. Where are you from, Arthur?”  
  
Arthur took a deep breath. “Chicago.”  
  
“Ah, a lovely city,” Eames’ mother said, “so cold and rainy, reminds me of England. I grew up in Yorkshire, you know. Do your parents still live there?”  
  
“My mother lives there. My father lives in Los Angeles.”  
  
Eames’ mother nodded, looking incredibly curious in a way that was very familiar. Eames, though, was still inspecting the menu, but Arthur had a feeling that he was listening closely.  
  
“They got separated when I was a kid,” Arthur said. “Anyway, I’ve got two sisters, Sophie and Michelle.” He glanced at Eames, who was rubbing the tip of his nose with the back of his hand. “I’m not very close with them. I’ve been kind of… travelling a lot. And we’re quite different. Michelle writes youth adult novels and screenplays, and Sophie is a freelance music producer and has three kids.”  
  
“I hope your whole family is coming to the wedding,” Eames’ mother said. “It’d be lovely to meet them.”  
  
Arthur opened his mouth.  
  
“Our wedding, dear,” Eames said pointedly. “Our wedding that’s next summer.”  
  
“Yes,” Arthur said, “yes, I suppose they are.”  
  
“We can talk about your wedding plans more a little later,” Eames’ mother said. “I’m so excited and Eames hasn’t told me _anything._ But coincidentally, he hasn’t told me anything about you, either, darling. So, what do you do for a living? What are you interests in live? Your favorite books? And how did the two of you meet? And would you like to come to our house in the countryside sometime, maybe next week?”  
  
“ _Mom_ ,” Eames said.  
  
“Sorry, sorry, it’s just that I’m very excited. I was beginning to think that Eames would never find anyone. Not that there’s anything wrong with that, and I’m certainly not saying that romantic love is essential for living your best possible life.” She paused. “Actually, I think _living your best possible life_ is bullshit, because who’s going to be the judge of that? And what are you comparing it to? But, well, back to Eames. I’ve been so worried, because he has seemed kind of lonely, and every time I asked, he just said he doesn’t have anyone and that I should stop asking. So, I just wanted someone to love him. And he is very lovable, you know, he has so many good qualities…” She paused again. “But of course you knew that already, Arthur.”  
  
“Actually –“  
  
“You can tell him about how lovely I am, Mom,” Eames said from behind his menu. “I’m sure that wouldn’t hurt.”  
  
But then the waitress came to take their orders. Arthur had been busy trying to pretend to be Eames’ boyfriend, so he hadn’t even glanced at the menu. He looked at Eames, and Eames said that the lamb here was very good. He said that sounded great, and Eames ordered for him, which was for the best because it turned out the whole menu was in French. Then the waitress left and took the menus with her, and Eames picked up the napkin and started inspecting it.  
  
“So,” Eames’ mother said, “I’d love to hear the story about how you met.”  
  
Arthur swallowed, thinking about the plot holes.  
  
“We met in a bar, Mom,” Eames said.  
  
“Yeah, I know that young people go to bars,” Eames’ mother said. “I know of things. So, when was this?”  
  
“Five years ago.”  
  
“Five _years_ –“  
  
“But we didn’t start a relationship right away,” Eames said. He sounded like he was reading notes. Also, he seemed to be squeezing the napkin quite tightly.  
  
“Yeah,” Arthur said, cleared his throat and then kicked Eames’ leg under the table but gently. “We met in a bar. I wasn’t really looking for anything. I was in London for work, because I’m a… I’m working in a bank. Planning things. That kind of stuff. I’ll spare you the details because they’re so boring.” And also he would have to make them up, and he wasn’t very good at making things up. “So, then I was in a… bar. And Eames came to talk to me. And he was very charming, and witty, and lovely, and he laughed a lot, and also he was irritating as hell and a little cocky and called me _darling_.”  
  
Eames’ mother laughed. “That sounds like him.”  
  
“Yeah,” Arthur said. “I brushed him off. But we both stayed in the bar. And after a couple of drinks, he came to talk to me again, and then I just kind… got stuck with him.” He bit his lip. Eames was watching him now, and the napkin was in pieces. “I wasn’t really… I was trying not to begin to like him, because he was… I thought that it’d never work out, because we are… we’re pretty different. And he gets on my nerves so badly. But also, he’s so incredibly good at his job –“  
  
“At online poker,” Eames said.  
  
Arthur took a deep breath. “Yes. He’s so good at online poker. But also, he’s surprisingly kind sometimes, like this one time, I hadn’t been sleeping much and I was so exhausted I could barely sit in my chair, and then he just brought me a sandwich. Without asking. And I snapped at him because I was so tired and didn’t know how to just accept it, and he patted me on the shoulder and let me eat the sandwich in peace. And when I tried to apologize later, he made me feel like I hadn’t done anything wrong.”  
  
“I don’t remember that,” Eames said, his voice very calm.  
  
“Yeah,” Arthur said, “that’s probably because you do things like that all the time.”  
  
“Only for you,” Eames said, and then he started coughing.  
  
“Anyway,” Arthur said, because Eames’ mother was staring at him and he had been in the middle of a very made-up story about how Eames and he had gotten together, “then eventually I realized that I like him a lot. I tried not to. But I couldn’t help it.”  
  
“Thank god,” Eames said. He sounded more like himself again. “But I hadn’t realized he actually liked me. I thought it was just a… casual thing. And then one time, I was at the online poker tournament in Chicago, and I called him, and he let me stay at his place, and then we…”  
  
Arthur’s face suddenly felt very warm.  
  
“I told him that I’ve been thinking about him a lot,” Eames said. “Like, even when I’m supposed to be thinking about something else entirely, say, work –“  
  
“Online poker,” Arthur added, trying not to think about the fact that he was probably blushing and his ears were bright pink and the light in the restaurant certainly didn’t hide that.  
  
“Yeah, online poker. So, even when I’m supposed to be thinking about online poker, and Arthur really wants me to be thinking about online poker, I might get distracted because I’m really thinking about Arthur. Arthur’s so…” Eames paused. “I don’t know how to say it.”  
  
“You don’t have to, darling,” Eames’ mother said. “I can see how much you like him.”  
  
“Yeah,” Eames said, “but…”  
  
“He lost the tournament but won my heart,” Arthur said, because Eames seemed somewhat lost.  
  
“Oh, that sounds like a title of a story,” Eames’ mother said. “I’m so glad you two found each other.”  
  
“Yeah, me too,” Arthur said, feeling suddenly a little bitter.  
  
Eames glanced at him and opened his mouth, but then the waitress came. The food was alright but didn’t look much like food, and Eames told Arthur in a surprisingly nice way what everything was and also which fork to use. Eames’ mother talked about Eames’ childhood and teenage days and studies and the dog Eames had had as a kid and then a little bit about Emma and Ruby’s wedding, and everything was going very smoothly, until she said something about Eames’ father and Eames froze.  
  
“I was so worried about how the kids could cope with it,” she was saying, “you know, something like that, it’s incredibly difficult even when you’re an adult, but when you’re just a kid… but I guess life goes on without asking.”  
  
“Mom,” Eames said in a strained voice.  
  
“We don’t talk much about it,” Eames’ mother said. “Sometimes I wish we would. But I’m so happy he’s got you now, so he has someone to talk to, even if he doesn’t want to talk to his mother.”  
  
“Can we talk about something else?” Eames asked.  
  
She turned to look at him. “But surely Arthur knows –“  
  
“Yes,” Eames said, “he knows. But…”  
  
“The weather,” Arthur said. “Can we… I heard… It’s been raining, right?”  
  
Eames’ mother seemed a little confused and maybe sad, but she gathered herself quickly and started talking about the weather and how it was different in London compared to Yorkshire and what kind of effects climate change was going to have during this century. Eames was quiet for a while and didn’t meet Arthur’s eyes, but then she asked about their cat and Eames told her how they had got Pringles. It was very interesting. Apparently Pringles had been their friend’s cat and the friend had had to give her up, so Arthur had convinced Eames that they should take her.  
  
“He’s so stubborn sometimes,” Eames said, “but obviously I love him,” and Arthur accidentally bit his fork and his tooth cracked.  
  
  
**  
  
  
Eames said he knew a good dentist. He took Arthur there, and it turned out that Eames and the dentist were childhood friends. They spent five minutes talking about skinny dipping, and Arthur waited, not feeling very good about the way the dentist kept touching Eames’ shoulder. She was very pretty for a woman and she had the same kind of accent than Eames and apparently they had been subtly checking out each other’s genitals in moonlight as teenagers, so Arthur supposed they would be happy together. He just wished he could go back home to Chicago and cry a little and then maybe get a cat, because he certainly couldn’t live without a cat anymore now that he had lived with Pringles for one day.  
  
“Oh,” Eames said, when Arthur had just started checking flights on his phone, “Victoria, this is Arthur. Arthur is my…”  
  
Arthur stared at him.  
  
“My boyfriend,” Eames said and cleared his throat. “My fiancé. My future husband. We are together.”  
  
“Oh my god,” Victoria said, “I’m so happy to meet you, Arthur. Can I hug you?” Then she hugged Arthur. “I’m so happy Eames finally got you.”  
  
Arthur bit his lip. “What?”  
  
“What?” Eames said, looking a little panicked.  
  
“Well, I suppose it’s you,” Victoria said slowly. Now she was looking concerned too. “I haven’t seen much of Eames lately. I guess online poker is keeping him busy and, you know, out of London. Which is a bit odd, since you’d expect it to happen online. But a few years ago, I had a group of friends at my house and we were all a little tipsy in the end of the evening, and then Eames disappeared. I found him in the kitchen, texting some guy. It was something about this guy’s… ass. So, I tried to make him talk about it and told him that if he really liked this guy, maybe he should text him sober and also check his spelling. And he told me that he didn’t know how to do that.”  
  
“I don’t remember that,” Eames said and then seemed to decide something. “But yeah, of course that was Arthur.”  
  
“I’m glad everything turned out fine,” Victoria said and turned to Arthur, “and you seem like a lovely guy.” Then she blinked and narrowed her eyes. “What happened to your tooth?”  
  
“Actually that’s why we’re here,” Eames said.  
  
  
**  
  
  
Two hours later, Arthur was inspecting his teeth in the rear-view window while Eames was driving them home. His teeth looked fine. Victoria had spent an hour fixing the cracked tooth and also had told him a lot of stories about Eames’ teenage days. He really wanted to get to his laptop, write those stories down and make a file of them.  
  
“It looks good,” Eames said, not looking at him. “Your tooth, I mean.”  
  
He leaned against the back of the chair. “Thanks.”  
  
“I’ve been thinking,” Eames said slowly, “what does a man need to do to get teeth like yours? Sell his soul?”  
  
That seemed like a very difficult question, so Arthur chose to ignore it. “Hey.”  
  
Eames glanced at him. “What?”  
  
“About your Dad.”  
  
Eames sighed.  
  
“Your Mom said something –“  
  
“He’s dead. He died when I was nine.”  
  
“Shit. That’s –“  
  
“Yeah.”  
  
Arthur cleared his throat. “I can’t imagine what –“  
  
“Yeah, I know. It’s alright.”  
  
“I hoped it might’ve been something, like, a bad divorce situation.”  
  
“No,” Eames said. “No, he died. In a car accident.”  
  
“I’m sorry.”  
  
“Thanks.” Eames glanced at him. “It’s been twenty-five years. I’m alright.”  
  
He nodded. “Yeah, I know. But you never told me.”  
  
“I never told you my surname either.”  
  
He smiled. “True.”  
  
“And it’s not like you’ve told me a lot about your family,” Eames said, stopping the car at the traffic light. “Both your sisters are artistic? Are you adopted?”  
  
“Fuck off.”  
  
Eames laughed and then took a deep breath. “Anyway, what do you want to do today? It’s only four. I thought I could take you out, like, for our perfect first date with chocolate and everything, but I haven’t had time to plan it yet. And I feel like maybe this day has been exciting enough for you already, with cracking your tooth and everything.”  
  
“It wasn’t my fault, though.”  
  
“It was definitely your fault,” Eames said. “You _bit_ the _fork._ ”  
  
“Well,” Arthur began and then remembered why he had bit the fork. “I still think I should’ve paid for it.”  
  
“Bullshit,” Eames said. “You’re my guest now. I insist to cover the expenses of all the lost body parts.”  
  
“It’s not like I don’t have the money.”  
  
“It’s also not like _I_ don’t have the money,” Eames said and then glanced at him. “You still have the money from the Fischer job?”  
  
“Mostly, yeah. There was a lot of it. As you know.”  
  
“Yeah. I bought a racehorse. So, now that you have all your teeth again, are you expecting to go out tonight? Because I don’t have anything planned yet, but we can always improvise.”  
  
“So, you don’t need me to… meet anyone today and pretend to be your…”  
  
“No,” Eames said, “no, nothing like that. You’re free for the rest of the day.” He paused. “Maybe you have other friends in London, someone you’d like to visit, or –“  
  
“No,” Arthur cut in, “I don’t know anyone except you.”  
  
“Great. I mean –“  
  
“But if you want to get rid of me, I guess I could go to a movie or –“  
  
“Absolutely not,” Eames said and glanced at him. “We’re going to do something together. What do you want to do?”  
  
Arthur took a deep breath. He supposed that what he really wanted to do was to sit on Eames’ orange sofa with the cat in his lap and watch a movie. And he wanted Eames to sit on the sofa next to him, maybe touch him for a few times but so casually that he could pretend it was an accident. And he wanted to have dinner with Eames in the house, possibly pizza, and he wanted chocolate, and to doze off on the sofa, and he wanted Eames to call him _darling._  
  
“I’d suggest,” Eames said slowly, “that we’d stay at home, eat pizza, sit on the sofa and watch a movie, and maybe eat chocolate. But you also told me that you’ve never been in a gay bar in London, so if you want to do something like that instead –“  
  
“No,” Arthur said, “no, I don’t want that. I want to sit on the sofa with you and eat chocolate.”  
  
Eames glanced at him. “Well, great. Then we want the same things.”  
  
“Seems like it,” he said. His heart was beating pretty quickly.  
  
“How lucky,” Eames said and smiled, but he sounded confused. Then he frowned and took a turn to the right in the crossroads. “I’m going to get you the best pizza in London.”  
  
  
**  
  
  
Arthur was sitting on the sofa, finishing his coffee and petting Pringles who had fallen asleep in his lap, when Eames came from the shower. It was a mystery why Eames walked to the living room instead of staying in his bedroom to put on some clothes, but there he was, standing in the doorway with nothing on except the towel wrapped around his waist. He looked at Arthur and Pringles and blinked.  
  
“Hey,” Arthur said.  
  
“Are you -,” Eames began, then cleared his throat and fell silent. That was weird. Arthur had known him for five years and he usually didn’t have any problems figuring out what to say.  
  
“Something wrong?”  
  
“No, it’s just…” Eames chewed on his lower lip. “You look so comfortable.”  
  
Arthur shifted on the sofa. Pringles woke up and protested. “Well, I –“  
  
“I didn’t mean it as a bad thing,” Eames cut in. “I meant… I didn’t forget that you’re here, I just… kind of got surprised.”  
  
“I can go to my room if you want,” Arthur said, hoping that Eames would realize he was kidding. He definitely wasn’t going to go to his room, not when the sofa and the cat and the television were here in the living room, and Eames was standing at the doorway half-naked.  
  
“Your room,” Eames said, sounding thoughtful. Then he walked across the living room to the kitchen, poured himself a cup of coffee, and walked back to the living room. Arthur watched him while he walked to the sofa, sat down next to Arthur and sipped his coffee. The towel miraculously stayed draped around his waist, but Arthur could see a lot of his thighs. He had definitely been going to gym. There was no way for a man to get a body like that otherwise, except maybe by selling his soul. “So, what do you think of our house?” he asked, looking at the television screen that was blank.  
  
Arthur bit his lip. “It’s big. And probably cost a lot of money.”  
  
“Yeah, well, I’m not going to tell you how much,” Eames said, winking at him. “No, really. Tell me what you think.”  
  
“You decorated this yourself?”  
  
Eames nodded.  
  
“It’s a mess,” Arthur said, looking at him. “And I don’t know what you do with so many rooms.”  
  
“They came with the house, I couldn’t help it,” Eames said and sipped his coffee. “Do you like my sofa?”  
  
“Yeah.”  
  
“Liar.”  
  
Arthur realized he was smiling. “I don’t love the color, but otherwise, this is a very nice sofa.”  
  
“You look like you’ve been sitting there your whole life,” Eames said in a light tone. “In a good way. So, is your house in Chicago decorated with only black and white? Maybe something wooden to add a little warmth?”  
  
“You’ve been reading decorating magazines,” Arthur said. “My house in Chicago is actually just a flat in the apartment building. Three rooms and a kitchen. And no, it’s not black and white.”  
  
“So, if you could, you wouldn’t change everything here.”  
  
“No,” Arthur said. “Just a few things.”  
  
“Good,” Eames said and nodded. “So, are you hungry? Should we start the movie? And have you decided what we’re going to watch?”  
  
“I thought we were going to decide together,” Arthur said. Then he opened his mouth, and closed it, and opened it again.  
  
Eames narrowed his eyes. “What?”  
  
“You’re naked.”  
  
“I’m not _naked_ ,” Eames said and then glanced down at his lap. The towel had shifted a little. “Quickly, give me the cat.”  
  
“I’m not going to give you the _cat_ ,” Arthur said. “She’s happy where she is. You need to put on some clothes.”  
  
Eames grimaced. “I don’t really like wearing clothes in my free time.”  
  
“Funny that I’m not surprised.”  
  
“But I could probably make an exception just for you,” Eames said. “How about if I wear boxers?”  
  
“Sounds like a good start,” Arthur said. He knew he was smiling again and also throwing quick glances at Eames’ lap, but he couldn’t help it. Then he thought about something. “I didn’t take casual clothes with me.”  
  
“Do you even _own_ casual clothes?” Eames asked, sounding skeptical.  
  
“Maybe you could be a gentleman and lend me something.”  
  
Eames blinked. “You want to wear my clothes.”  
  
Well, that sounded odd. “Yes.”  
  
“That’s…” Eames took a deep breath and nodded. “Alright. I’ll get you something to wear. And I’ll put on boxers so you can stop trying to see my dick.”  
  
“Thank you,” Arthur said, hoping he sounded at least a bit more dignified than he felt.  
  
Eames walked to the bedroom, didn’t close the door, put the towel away with his back turned to Arthur, and then put on boxers. He had a nice ass. Arthur didn’t bother trying to look like he hadn’t been staring, because it was very obvious Eames had done nothing to stop him from staring and therefore it was Eames’ fault. So, when Eames glanced at him over his shoulder, he just raised his eyebrows and then waited on the sofa when Eames went through his wardrobe and picked up clothes for him.  
  
“Really?” he asked, when Eames gave him the clothes.  
  
“They are casual,” Eames said.  
  
Arthur went to Eames’ bedroom, closed the door, changed his clothes and opened the door again.  
  
“Perfect,” Eames said.  
  
“These sweatpants are so big they’re going to fall down at some point.”  
  
“I’m counting on that.”  
  
“And this t-shirt is pink.”  
  
“Yes, it is.”  
  
“This is not how you flirt with a man, you know,” Arthur said, walking to the sofa. The sweatpants were surprisingly comfortable. And the pink t-shirt was very soft, and he tried not to think about the fact that Eames had probably been wearing these same clothes over and over again.  
  
“Isn’t it?” Eames said. “I think it’s working.”  
  
“No, it’s not,” Arthur said. Pringles jumped into his lap again. “You just have me already.”  
  
“Arthur,” Eames said in a quiet voice, “I don’t _have_ you.”  
  
“Of course you do,” Arthur said, leaned the back of his neck against the back of the sofa and closed it eyes. “I heard we’ve been together for three years and we have a cat and we’re going to get married next summer.”  
  
  
**  
  
  
The pizza was great. Arthur said it was probably the best pizza in London, and Eames looked so delighted it seemed risky to even glance at him. Then they tried to decide which movie to watch and that took an hour. But the movie they eventually chose was great. It was a romantic comedy and there was a happy ending, and Pringles was sleeping in Arthur’s lap and the sweatpants hadn’t fallen down yet and all in all, Arthur couldn’t quite realize how he had ended up in Eames’ house in London, watching a romantic comedy on Eames’ very comfortable sofa.  
  
“Arthur,” Eames said, looking at the credits on the television screen.  
  
“Yeah?”  
  
“Why aren’t you seeing anyone?”  
  
Arthur turned to look at him. “How do you know that I’m not?”  
  
“Just a guess,” Eames said, “since you’re in my house, pretending to be my boyfriend.”  
  
“It’s not difficult.”  
  
“What isn’t?”  
  
“Pretending to be your boyfriend.”  
  
Eames blinked. “Really?”  
  
“Yeah.”  
  
“You don’t think it’s difficult.”  
  
“I really don’t. At least right now it isn’t.”  
  
“Now,” Eames said slowly, “when you’re sitting on my sofa, wearing my clothes and petting my cat.”  
  
“ _Our_ cat.”  
  
“So, you aren’t seeing anyone.”  
  
Arthur took a deep breath. “No, I’m not seeing anyone.”  
  
“Don’t you want to?”  
  
“I don’t know.” He looked at Eames. “Don’t you want to be seeing anyone?”  
  
“It’s not very easy to find someone nice to date, when you’re an international criminal.”  
  
“But you’re also rich, nice and good-looking.”  
  
Eames smiled at him. “I am?”  
  
“Hasn’t anyone told you?”  
  
“You hadn’t yet,” Eames said. Then something shifted on his face. “I hope you aren’t marrying me only because of my money.”  
  
“Of course I’m marrying you because of your money,” Arthur said. He knew he sounded sincere but right now, he didn’t care. It probably should have been a little worrying how safe he felt, being with Eames like this. “I don’t give a shit about your money, Eames.”  
  
“Good to know,” Eames said, watching him.  
  
“But I like your cat.”  
  
“I can see that.”  
  
“I don’t actually remember when was the last time that I watched a movie in someone else’s home.”  
  
“Well,” Eames said slowly, “you just spent two years running around the world with Cobb.”  
  
Arthur closed his eyes. “Yeah. _Shit._ ”  
  
“Maybe that’s why you haven’t been dating,” Eames said and then was quiet or a moment. “Did you ever…”  
  
“What?”  
  
“You and Cobb.”  
  
“ _What?_ ” Arthur asked and opened his eyes. “ _Really?_ ”  
  
“You followed him around the world,” Eames said, chewing on his lower lip, but at least he looked a little embarrassed. “It’s not completely irrational to wonder if perhaps you two weren’t just friends.”  
  
“Yeah, it is,” Arthur said and smacked Eames’ on the arm. Eames’ skin was warm and very distracting. “Dom is straight.”  
  
Eames shook his head. “No one is that straight.”  
  
“What the hell do you mean, _that straight?_ ”  
  
“Straight enough to stay straight if they sleep in hotel rooms with you for two years.”  
  
“Fuck off,” Arthur said. He knew he was blushing and he hated it, but also he wasn’t going to remove Pringles from his lap so that he could escape. “Nothing ever happened.”  
  
“Nothing?”  
  
“Yeah. _Nothing._ ”  
  
Eames cleared his throat. “Did you want something to happen?”  
  
“Eames,” Arthur said, “that’s a very personal question.”  
  
“I know,” Eames said.  
  
Arthur was quiet for a moment and then took a deep breath. “I was lonely sometimes. But I’m not in love with Dom or anything, in case that’s what you’re asking. That’s not why I helped him. I helped him because he’s my friend and he was in trouble.”  
  
“Like you came to London because I was in trouble.”  
  
“You weren’t really in trouble,” Arthur said. He didn’t point out that they weren’t exactly friends, either. That seemed like a weird thing to say when he was wearing Eames’ clothes and thinking about adopting Eames’ cat.  
  
“I’m glad you came, though.”  
  
“Yeah,” Arthur said, “me too.”


	4. The Best That Life Can Give

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> _“Can I keep you?”_

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> In this chapter there's a party and we meet Eames' ex!

When Arthur woke up the next morning, there was a cat on his pillow. He also felt like he had probably swallowed some cat hair during the night. He sat up on the mattress and Pringles woke up and climbed off the bed, looking a little annoyed about having been disrupted like that. Arthur put on Eames’ too large sweatpants and the pink t-shirt and followed her to the kitchen, where Eames was sitting at the table, eating chocolate cereal.  
  
“So, I’m not getting crêpes this morning,” Arthur said and poured himself a cup of coffee.  
  
“Good morning,” Eames said. “I don’t think it’d be wise to get you used to the idea that you’re going to get  c rêpes every morning.”  
  
“For the rest of my life.”  
  
Eames’ spoon halted on the way to his mouth. “Exactly.”  
  
“I wouldn’t mind, though,” Arthur said, sat down at the table across from Eames and poured himself cereal. “What are we doing today?”  
  
“Well,” Eames said slowly, “there’s a party, but we don’t have to go there, if we don’t want to. I mean, everyone else is coming, and Mom obviously hopes that I’m going to be there, and they all want desperately to meet you, but we could just stay home if you like.”  
  
“I thought you asked me here so that you could show me off to everyone,” Arthur said and pointed at the chocolate cereal in his bowl. “This is actually good.”  
  
“Yeah,” Eames said. “But really, we don’t have to go if you don’t want to.”  
  
“It’s okay. We can go. Just, can you…”  
  
“Yeah?”  
  
“Can you not abandon me in the middle of people I don’t know?”  
  
“So, you don’t like to mingle at the parties,” Eames said, smiling a little.  
  
“No, I absolutely hate it.”  
  
Eames grinned at him. “I should’ve known that. But don’t worry. I promise I’ll stay with you the whole time. You can even come to the men’s room with me if you want to.”  
  
“I don’t think that’ll be necessary.”  
  
“Did you bring a suit?”  
  
He nodded.  
  
“Brilliant,” Eames said. “They’re going to love you, and also think that you’re too good for me.” Then he paused, sat back in his chair and crossed his arms over his chest. “But maybe we should negotiate a little.”  
  
“Negotiate?”  
  
“Yeah.”  
  
“About what?”  
  
“Well,” Eames said slowly, “you’re pretending to be my boyfriend. And we haven’t really talked about what…”  
  
“What, _what?_ ”  
  
“I mean,” Eames said, rubbing the side of his nose. “If you were _actually_ my boyfriend, and we were in a party together, I might, I don’t know, touch you sometimes, like, put a hand on your back or squeeze your shoulder or hold your hand or something.”  
  
“You can touch me,” Arthur said. “I don’t mind.”  
  
Eames cleared his throat. “I can?”  
  
“You already held my hand once. When we met your sister and her fiancée.”  
  
“Oh,” Eames said, blinking, “right. Sorry.”  
  
“I’m trying to tell you that you can do it again. It was nice.” Arthur blinked. Maybe he shouldn’t have said that. “I mean, it was okay.”  
  
“Good,” Eames said watching him. “What about kissing?”  
  
He had to cough a little until he managed to swallow the chocolate cereal stuck in his throat. “Kissing?”  
  
“Yeah,” Eames said. He looked so determined that it was almost frightening. “What if there comes a situation in which I would kiss you, if we actually were a couple?”  
  
Arthur tried very hard to breathe normally, but it was impossible now that he was thinking about Eames kissing him. “Then you can kiss me.”  
  
“I can?”  
  
“Yeah.”  
  
“You don’t have to, you know,” Eames said, staring at him. “You can just tell me that ‘no, Eames, you can’t kiss me’.”  
  
“I’m telling you that ‘yes, Eames, you can kiss me’.”  
  
“When we are at the party and everyone I know is staring at us and I feel like kissing you.”  
  
He swallowed. “Yes. Just don’t use tongue.”  
  
Eames smiled a little. “Don’t use tongue?”  
  
“Yeah.”  
  
“That would be too much?”  
  
“Yeah.”  
  
“I thought I knew you,” Eames said, shaking his head slowly. “But I never thought you’d let me kiss you. Just like that.”  
  
“You never asked.”  
  
“But this isn’t…” Eames took a deep breath, looked away from him and then back at him again. “You wouldn’t say that to anyone, right?”  
  
“No,” Arthur said, even though the word suddenly felt so big it barely fit in his mouth.  
  
They talked about the weather for a while. Apparently it had been raining a lot in London. Then Pringles jumped up onto the table and dropped the box of cereal. After they had finished cleaning the cereal from the floor, Arthur remember what they had been talking about before all this. He escaped to his room and pretended he was trying to choose an outfit for the party. He supposed Eames realized what he was doing, because Eames let him be alone. The only one who followed him was Pringles, who sat down on his bed and stared judgingly at every outfit that he showed her.  
  
  
**  
  
  
“This is my favorite restaurant in London,” Eames said and took Arthur to a pub that only served three kinds of hamburgers and had multiple screens on the wall, all of them showing sports. Arthur said Eames could order for him, and then he had to bite his lip not to smile about how delighted Eames looked at that. Eames got him a cheese hamburger, but he wasn’t going to complain. They sat at a table so small that their knees kept brushing against each other, and Eames told stories about the times he had been here when he had been in university doing his degree. And then suddenly he went quiet.  
  
“What?” Arthur asked.  
  
Eames glanced at him and licked his lips. “I just remembered the rest of the story I was telling you.”  
  
Arthur cleared his throat. “So?”  
  
“I met my ex that night,” Eames said. “Here.”  
  
_Oh._ “You can talk to me about your ex.”  
  
“Yeah,” Eames said slowly, “because it’s not like we’re really together, so you won’t get jealous.”  
  
Arthur didn’t say anything to that.  
  
“Do you get jealous? Generally?”  
  
“Yeah,” Arthur said, thinking about the last day, at the dentist’s office. “I’m not… I realize it’s stupid, but… yeah.”  
  
“Have you ever been jealous of me?”  
  
He nodded.  
  
Eames smiled at him.  
  
“Fuck off,” he said. “It’s not fun.”  
  
“I’m a little jealous about how much you did for Cobb,” Eames said. “That’s why I asked about it yesterday.”  
  
“You don’t have anything to be jealous of,” Arthur said, realizing vaguely how irrational this conversation was. “There really was nothing going on.”  
  
“Well, luckily I’ve got you here now,” Eames said.  
  
After lunch, they went back home. Eames seemed a little quieter than usually, and Arthur tried not to wonder what that meant. They watched a few more episodes of _Game of Thrones_ and argued about whether the violence in the show was essential for the plot or not, until they realized that they were both trying to make the point that it _wasn’t_ essential. Then Eames wanted to know Arthur’s opinion for the suit he was thinking about wearing tonight, and Arthur stared as he put it on without closing the door. The suit looked fine. Eames looked great. But Arthur couldn’t tell him that, so he walked closer and brushed the cat hair from the fabric and said that at least it fit nicely even if the color was a little experimental. Eames asked if Arthur could do his tie, then looked at himself in the mirror for a few seconds and took the whole thing off without telling Arthur to get away from the room.  
  
Later, Arthur took a shower, made sure that the door was locked, and jerked off as efficiently as he could. That helped a little. When Eames later walked around wearing nothing but boxers and socks, Arthur was able to pretend that he wasn’t watching. But he was. And he was desperately trying not to wonder what the hell he was doing here, in Eames’ house, getting ready to go to a party as Eames’ boyfriend. He probably shouldn’t have said to Eames that Eames could kiss him, but the sheer thought of Eames kissing him was making something go soft inside of him. And something else hard, even though he had just tried to take care of that.  
  
He locked himself in his room, put on his suit, had a short argument with Pringles about how stupid he was and how badly this all would end for him, and then he went back to the living room, where Eames was struggling with his tie again. Eames turned to him and froze.  
  
“What?” he asked.  
  
“Arthur,” Eames said slowly. “Come on.”  
  
“Come on what?” Arthur asked. He was getting a little nervous.  
  
“You look lovely,” Eames said. “I don’t know how you do that. I don’t even like suits.”  
  
Arthur swallowed.  
  
“Please, can you do this again for me?” Eames asked then, pointing at his tie, so Arthur walked to him, pushed his hands off, and fastened his tie. It had tiny horses on it. Arthur’s hands were shaking a little and he could feel Eames’ breathing on his face. They were almost exactly of the same height. He supposed he had never really realized that. He bit his lip and kept his eyes on his hands as he finished with the tie, and Eames brushed his fingers against his side before stepping back.  
  
“Thanks,” Eames said.  
  
“You’re welcome,” Arthur said.  
  
  
**  
  
  
It took them an hour and a half to drive to the place that Eames called their country house. Arthur was waiting for something like the castle in the beginning of Disney movies and was a little disappointed when they parked at the yard of a house that was grand and fancy but still just a house. But he wasn’t disappointed for long. He got out of the car and Eames put a hand on his back as they walked to the house. There wasn’t even anyone looking at them yet. He let himself lean against Eames’ hand a little, and Eames only pulled his hand away when they were inside and someone took their coats. Arthur tried to introduce himself but Eames grabbed his elbow and dragged him forward.  
  
“You came!” Emma said, walking to them through the crowd. She hugged first Eames and then Arthur. “I’m so glad.”  
  
“I hope we aren’t late,” Eames said.  
  
“No, not at all,” Emma said and turned to Arthur. “So, I’m going to let you know who you should avoid. Aunt Liza is very nice, but she always wants to talk about Margaret Thatcher, so if that’s not a topic you enjoy, try to figure out an excuse and get out before she starts. And Aunt Maggie is great if she’s sober, but after a few glasses of wine, she’s going to want to know everything about your sex life, and she’s not shy.”  
  
Arthur bit his lip.  
  
“If I were you,” Emma said, “I’d make up a story you can tell her. Something not too explicit. That’s what I did, and now every time she sees me, she just winks at me.”  
  
“We can figure something out,” Eames said, placing his hand on the low of Arthur’s back again. Arthur wondered if Eames even realized he was doing it, or if that was something Eames did with everyone who was pretending to be his boyfriend.  
  
“Don’t borrow money to Uncle Joe,” Emma said. “We think that he’s secretly an international criminal.”  
  
Arthur glanced at Eames. Eames shook his head slightly.  
  
“And, _shit,_ Eames. Naomi is here.”  
  
Eames pulled his hand away from Arthur’s back. “What? I thought she wasn’t going to –“  
  
“Yeah,” Emma said, “apparently she broke up with her boyfriend and came back to England earlier than she thought she would. She texted me yesterday and asked if the invitation was still on. I didn’t know what to say.”  
  
“That’s perfectly alright,” Eames said, sounding nervous.  
  
Emma grimaced. “I’m sorry. I thought that maybe now that you have Arthur –“  
  
“Is she here already?”  
  
“Yeah. I think she’s in the drawing room, talking to Helen. Eames –“  
  
“It’s alright,” Eames said, hugged her again and then placed his hand briefly on Arthur’s arm. “I think we should go find Mom now. I want to say hi.”  
  
“Eames –,” Emma started, but Eames was already walking away. Arthur followed him. They walked across some kind of a very fancy living room and then through the corridor, and then Eames opened another door, switched on the light, waited as Arthur walked in, and closed the door again.  
  
Arthur looked around. The door was small. There was a desk in front of the window, two chairs, a bookshelf full of books, and walls covered with dried butterfly specimens. “What –“  
  
“This is my father’s study,” Eames said, turning to him. “He was a researcher. I can’t believe Naomi's here.”  
  
“Who’s Naomi?”  
  
“My ex,” Eames said, glancing around.  
  
“Your _ex?_ ”  
  
“Yeah. We were together when I was doing my degree.” Eames took a deep breath. “And then we had a short thing something like five years ago. I haven’t seen her after that.”  
  
“What happened?”  
  
Eames turned to him. “What?”  
  
“What happened?” he asked again. “Why did you… why did you break up? Not that it’s any of my business, but –“  
  
“This is going to sound bad,” Eames said, grimacing. “I cheated on her.”  
  
Arthur frowned.  
  
“Twice,” Eames said. “I know, I was stupid. The first time, I was twenty-three and drunk and I just… I think I missed having sex with men. So I fucked this one guy I met at a bar. Totally not worth it. And the second time was five years ago, when we were kind of… trying to date again, and I had just met you, and I –“  
  
Arthur stared at him. “You what?”  
  
“I shouldn’t have said that,” Eames said.  
  
“What exactly did you say?” Arthur asked. “That you were dating your ex, and then you met me, and then –“  
  
Eames cleared his throat. “Do you remember when we first met?”  
  
“Yeah, of course,” Arthur said. “It was my second job with Mal and Dom, and I didn’t even know what a forger does, so obviously I read about it beforehand and couldn’t believe it. And then we were there, in Moscow, in late November, and it was a Wednesday evening, and then –“  
  
“You looked at me like you couldn’t believe what I was doing. And then I tried to flirt with you even though I knew that I shouldn’t have, and you got really pissed at me.”  
  
“We were _working_ and you said that you liked my ass.”  
  
“I was nervous,” Eames said. “Mal cornered me that evening and told me to keep my hands off you.”  
  
“Okay,” Arthur said. “Well, that was a good advice. But –“  
  
“The job was a disaster, as you probably remember. And then I went back to London and I was supposed to meet Naomi again, but I was kind of panicking, because I really liked her, but also I was an international criminal now and I didn’t know how to tell her that. And I didn’t know if I could be in a relationship again. And I was pretty sure that I was going to fuck it up and she was going to leave me again, and I didn’t know if my heart could take it the second time. And so I went to a gay bar in London, and there was this one guy. He had dark brown eyes and dark hair and he was wearing a suit, like he had dressed up for a job interview and not for a bar.” Eames bit his lip. “I went back to his place for the night and sneaked out in the morning and Naomi dumped me again.”  
  
“That was five years ago,” Arthur said. Maybe if he stared at the dead butterflies on the walls and not Eames, he could figure out what to say.  
  
“I saw her a couple of times after that,” Eames said. “We tried to, I don’t know, be some kind of friends. But now I haven’t seen her in three years.”  
  
Arthur took a deep breath. He was still a little confused about why they were hiding from Eames’ ex-girlfriend. He was also kind of upset that Eames had had a relationship with a _woman_ , even though he certainly knew that was childish. _And_ he had a feeling that Eames was trying to tell him that he was somehow connected to all this. It just didn’t make much sense. “Eames –“  
  
Someone knocked on the door. “Eames?” said a woman’s voice. “I’m sorry. Emma told me you’re there.”  
  
“We aren’t here, Naomi,” Eames said loudly.  
  
The woman was quiet for a moment. “Yeah, she told that you’re there too, Arthur. Nice to meet you. I’m sure you’re a great guy. Eames, I’d like to talk to you.”  
  
“We’re having sex,” Eames said and then grimaced even before Arthur kicked him in the ankle.  
  
“Okay,” Eames’ ex-girlfriend said. “I’m going to talk quickly. I wasn’t going to come here today, but as you know, I used to be good friends with Emma and I kind of wanted to see her. And also I wanted to see you. I think it’s weird that we used to be so close and now I haven’t seen you in three years. And I’m very nervous about having to face you again, and I don’t really know what to say, and I kind of want to hide somewhere, but this isn’t my house so my only choice is the toilet, and I don’t want to spend the whole evening in the toilet. So, if we happen to run into each other tonight, I hope we could try to, I don’t know, at least smile or something.” She was silent for a second. “Yeah, that’s about it.”  
  
Arthur kicked Eames in the ankle again. Eames glared at him but went to the door and opened it. The woman standing on the corridor seemed quite nervous.  
  
“So,” she said, “you finished already.”  
  
“Yeah,” Eames said slowly. “You know me. I’m always fast.”  
  
She smiled just a little.  
  
“This is Arthur,” Eames said, pointing at Arthur. “He’s my…”  
  
“Hi,” Arthur said, stepped forward and shook her hand. “I’m Arthur. Nice to meet you. Sorry about that.”  
  
“No worries,” Naomi said. “Nice to meet you too. And I hope I’m going to get to know you. But would you mind if I borrowed Eames for a moment?”  
  
Eames cleared his throat and touched Arthur’s arm. “Actually, I kind of promised Arthur that I’d stay with him at this party. He doesn’t like to mingle.”  
  
“It’s alright,” Arthur said. “You can –“  
  
“No, I understand,” Naomi cut in. “Mingling is the worst. Maybe I could just… would you mind if I sit down for a little bit and chat with you guys?”  
  
They stayed in Eames’ father’s study for something like ten minutes. Arthur found himself telling a story about how Eames had drunk-texted him compliments about his ass and he had spent days trying to figure out if it was a joke or not, and if not, if Eames was genuinely trying to hit on him, and if yes, why he was doing it so badly, and also why his spelling was so bad and still so recognizably posh and British. Naomi laughed a little and told him a story about how she had first taken Eames to meet her family, and Eames had been both utterly charming and a total disaster. Eames squirmed in his chair and once in a while glanced at Naomi in a way that was making Arthur jealous, but mostly he was looking at Arthur.  
  
“She seems nice,” Arthur said later, when they were alone, taking a walk in the garden before they would go back in and meet all Eames’ relatives.  
  
“ _You_ are nice,” Eames said and poked him at the elbow. “Can I keep you?”  
  
“Sure,” Arthur said in what he hoped was a calm tone.  
  
  
**  
  
  
Four hours later, Arthur had had a long conversation about Margaret Thatcher with Aunt Liza, had told a very vague and sadly untrue story about his sex life with Eames to Aunt Maggie who had scribbled it down in her notebook, and hadn’t borrowed money to Uncle Joe, who definitely wasn’t an international criminal but probably had gambling debts. Now, he was sitting in the corner in the dining hall, and Eames was sitting next to him, his arm kind of draped over Arthur’s shoulders. Some people were talking, a few were dancing, one of Eames’ cousins was sitting in the opposite corner reading a book, and Eames’ mother was walking straight at them.  
  
Arthur cleared his throat. Eames kept his arm on his shoulders.  
  
“You two look tired,” Eames’ mother said as she reached them. “Are you staying here for the night?”  
  
“Yeah,” Eames said. He was kind of stroking Arthur’s right shoulder now. “I think so, at least. What do you think, darling?”  
  
Arthur blinked. “Sorry?”  
  
“There’s a room for us upstairs, unless we want to go home for the night. But I don’t think either of us can drive right now.”  
  
“Yeah, no,” Arthur said and patted Eames on the knee. It was right there. And Eames was touching him, so he supposed he was allowed to touch Eames as well. “We can stay.”  
  
“Great,” Eames’ mother said. “Then we can all have breakfast together tomorrow.”  
  
Arthur nodded. “Sounds good.”  
  
“Your sister’s so happy,” Eames’ mother said, looking over her shoulder. Emma and Ruby were dancing between the tables and the chairs. “I know it’s a little old-fashioned to be happy about weddings. But I can’t help it. I’m so relieved you both found a person with whom you can share whatever difficulties life throws at you.”  
  
Eames’ fingers on Arthur’s shoulder had stilled. “Yeah.”  
  
“And I know it’s terrifying,” Eames’ mother said. She was looking at Emma and Ruby again. Arthur slowly pulled his hand away from Eames’ knee. “Because losing someone you love, it’s just… I suppose it happens to all of us, eventually, in one way or another. And still the pain is just… I honestly didn’t think I’d survive. I probably wouldn’t have, but I had to, for my kids.” She smiled a little. “But no matter how much it hurts when we lose the ones we love, it’s still better than not having had that love in the first place. Right?”  
  
“Right,” Arthur said, because Eames didn’t seem to be about to answer.  
  
“It’s the best that life can give us,” Eames’ mother said. She sounded as if she was talking to herself now. “And it’s also what hurts us the most.”  
  
“Mom,” Eames said, pulling his arm away from Arthur’s shoulders, “maybe you should go to sleep.”  
  
“Oh, fuck off, Eames,” his mother said, smiling, “I’m only seventy-one years old. I can stay up until midnight. You youngsters can go to bed if you want to.”  
  
Arthur bit his lip. He suddenly felt like there was no way he could handle another uncle or aunt. “Actually –“  
  
“Yeah, I think we’re going to go to bed,” Eames said and touched Arthur’s arm but only briefly. “We’re in my old room, right?”  
  
“Yes,” Eames’ mother said. “Are you hungry? I’m sure there’s still something in the kitchen.”  
  
Eames glanced at Arthur. Arthur shook his head. “I think we’re fine,” Eames said to his mother. “Good night."  
  
Arthur said good night as well, and then they walked across the room and to the stairs. Emma and Ruby were still dancing.  
  
  
**  
  
  
It turned out that the room was small, and there was only one bed.  
  
“Sorry,” Eames said, closing the door behind them. “I could go down and ask if there’s another room –“  
  
“No,” Arthur said, “don’t do that. I mean… I don’t mind sharing, if you don’t.”  
  
Eames nodded, not really looking at him.  
  
“We’re supposed to be a couple, after all. It’d look funny if I insisted having my own room.”  
  
“Maybe I snore,” Eames said. He sounded tired, and as if he was thinking about something else entirely.  
  
Arthur tried to drop it, but he just couldn’t. “Hey.”  
  
Eames looked up at him. “Yeah?”  
  
“Are you alright?”  
  
Eames took a deep breath and sat down on the edge of the mattress. “Yeah. It’s just that… I kind of remembered it’s not real.”  
  
Arthur felt suddenly cold. “What isn’t?”  
  
“Us,” Eames said, eyeing him. “My mother’s going to be so disappointed, when I let her know that you dumped me.”  
  
He swallowed.  
  
“And,” Eames said, “it’s not just that I don’t want to disappoint her. I also really want it. The whole thing. What she was talking about… finding love and then eventually losing it and how much it’s going to hurt. I kind of want that very much.”  
  
“Yeah,” Arthur said. He didn’t know what to say, so he sat down next to Eames. “Yeah, me too.”  
  
Eames was silent for a long time. Arthur wondered what would happen if he tried to touch Eames here, where no one was watching them. It would be real. Maybe he could place his hand on Eames’ knee. Eames would guess what he was trying to say.  
  
And then Eames might tell him that actually, he had been imagining everything. He had been stupid to think that maybe some of this was real.  
  
“We only have one bed,” Eames said finally, sounding more like himself again. “Where’re you going to sleep?”  
  
“I was wondering where you’re going to sleep,” Arthur said, even though he had a tight feeling in his chest, and he supposed it wasn’t from a heart attack. “But I’ll let you sleep in bed if you ask nicely.”  
  
“Please,” Eames said.  
  
They brushed their teeth in the ensuite. Then they took turns taking a piss, and meanwhile the other one stripped off to his boxers. Everything felt strange and strangely familiar at the same time. Arthur had had two boyfriends in his life, and he had difficulties trying to remember how this all happened: doing things separately but together, dancing around each other in a way that would after a while become routines. He got into the bed and accidentally kicked Eames’ in the leg, and then he couldn’t decide on which side to lie, because he really wanted to lie on his right side but then he would have to face Eames, and he definitely couldn’t do that. He could hear Eames’ breathing coming from much too close, and also he wanted to shift closer to Eames, maybe entangle their legs, drape his arm around Eames’ waist, pull him closer, bury his nose in the crook of Eames’ neck, kiss him, then kiss him again, then take his face in between his hands and kiss him on the mouth, and _shit,_ he didn’t even remember when the last time had been that he had had sex. It seemed like a real possibility that he wouldn’t remember how. But he was pretty sure he would take a chance for Eames. And he didn’t even know what kind of sex Eames liked. It could be anything. And Arthur was flexible but not terribly so. He didn’t always know what he wanted, but he did know a few things he didn’t want. Maybe they would want the opposite things. Maybe they would finally try to do… something, anything, after Eames had given terrible compliments about his ass for _years_ , and then everything would be a disaster, and Arthur would feel like an idiot for trying.  
  
“Arthur?”  
  
He blinked. “Yeah?”  
  
“I’m glad you came tonight,” Eames said. “Good night.”  
  
“Good night,” Arthur said.  
  



	5. The Date Night

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> _"I don’t usually drunk-text guys to complement their asses. It’s just you.”_

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Guys guys guys it's a date night!
> 
> Also, it has now been confirmed (like, maybe with the probability of 95%) that there's going to be a total of 8 chapters in this story. Or, 7 chapters and an epilogue, to be precise.

There was a streak of sunlight coming through the gap in the curtains. Arthur peered his eyes open and then closed them again, but that didn’t help. He had to get rid of the sun. He climbed out of the bed as carefully as he could and sneaked across the room to tug at the curtains, and when he turned to sneak back, he realized Eames was looking at him.  
  
“Are you going to sneak out?” Eames asked. “Because I have to remind you that my whole family is downstairs and they think we’re engaged. They aren’t going to take it lightly if you try to disappear.”  
  
“I’m not going to try to disappear,” Arthur said, standing next to the bed.  
  
“Good. I wouldn’t want you to get lost in the English countryside.”  
  
He nodded. He had managed to block the sunlight, but now he didn’t know what to do. Eames was watching him, and if he went back to bed, it would look like he was doing it on purpose, as if he wanted to lie there beside Eames. Which he did. He just didn’t want Eames to know that. But now he was standing in the middle of the room in his boxers like an idiot, and he didn’t want that either.  
  
“Come back to bed,” Eames said. “Just for ten minutes. Then we can go to breakfast.”  
  
“Okay,” Arthur said.  
  
  
**  
  
  
The breakfast was fine, except that Emma teased Eames very kindly and nicely about what it had been like to have sex in his childhood bedroom, and Arthur tried to smile but felt surprisingly bitter about not having got to have sex in Eames’ childhood’s bedroom. On the way back to London, Eames was quiet so Arthur stayed quiet too, watching through the side window as the countryside turned into suburban areas and then into the city. When they finally got home and Eames opened the front door, Pringles came to meet them in the entrance hallway. Arthur picked her up and spent the next ten minutes petting her. That made him feel slightly better.  
  
“The wedding’s tomorrow,” Eames said around midday. He was standing in the doorway to Arthur’s room, and Arthur was on the bed with his laptop. He wasn’t exactly looking for the next job, but he couldn’t stay in London with Eames forever, and he desperately needed something to do when all this would be over.  
  
“Yeah, I know,” Arthur said.  
  
Eames nodded, shifting his weight from one foot to another. “I think I promised you that we’d go on a date.”  
  
Arthur swallowed. “Yeah, I remember.”  
  
“Just you and me. Not my family. Certainly not my ex.”  
  
“Yeah.”  
  
“So, maybe you have something else going on –“ Eames nodded at Arthur’s laptop, “- or maybe you don’t feel like going on a date with me, I don’t know, but if you want to, I think we could do that today.”  
  
Arthur bit his lip. “Yeah. Yes. That sounds good.”  
  
“You want to go on a date with me?”  
  
“Yes,” Arthur said and cleared his throat. “I believe you promised me there would be dessert.”  
  
“I think I did,” Eames said slowly. “Alright. I want you to be ready at five. And you can’t bring your laptop. Wear something nice, as if you were trying to hit on me.”  
  
“Okay,” Arthur said.  
  
“Great,” Eames said. “See you then.”  
  
“Eames –“  
  
“Yeah?”  
  
“I’m hungry.”  
  
“Well,” Eames said, leaning against the doorframe, “the fridge is empty. We haven’t done our grocery shopping. Actually, I don’t believe we’ve even talked about our household tasks and who does what and when.”  
  
“Even though we’re both living here,” Arthur said slowly. It was probably a bit not good how happy he was that apparently they were still playing this game.  
  
“Yeah,” Eames said. “Funny how we’ve survived two years without figuring that out. Have you ever cleaned our bathroom?”  
  
“No.”  
  
“Me neither. Maybe it cleans itself.” Eames grinned and then frowned again. “But the thing is, we don’t have anything except chocolate cereal. Maybe we should go out for lunch.”  
  
“We’re going to go on a date in five hours,” Arthur said. “I need time to prepare.”  
  
“Really?” Eames asked. He sounded delighted. “Well, there’s a Chinese restaurant just down the block. We could go there. It’s so close you don’t even need to dress up.”  
  
“I’m already wearing a tie.”  
  
“You actually are,” Eames said, frowning. “That’s weird. Maybe put a sweater on so that no one will notice.” Then he turned and walked to his own bedroom, and Pringles jumped onto Arthur’s bed and settled on his laptop. It was clearly the perfect time for lunch.  
  
  
**  
  
  
“Are you ready?”  
  
Arthur turned around. Eames was standing in the doorway, looking at him. He glanced at the mirror for one last time, checking that his hair was fixed back and there were no strands sticking out, and then he walked out of the ensuite and to Eames.  
  
“Hey,” Eames said, nodding at Arthur. “You missed a spot.”  
  
“What?”  
  
“Here,” Eames said, raised his hand and brushed his thumb against Arthur’s chin. He looked a little surprised. “Which razor do you use? Or what is this, magic?”  
  
“Asshole,” Arthur said, biting his lip. “I didn’t miss a spot. I never miss a spot.”  
  
“Of course you didn’t,” Eames said and patted him on the back. “You look good, though. I’m a little afraid to touch you, in case that breaks the spell.”  
  
“It’s not a spell. It’s just that I only buy clothes that are of the right size.”  
  
Eames grinned. “It’s not my fault that sometimes I go to gym and sometimes I don’t and then everything I own is suddenly too large. Or that there’s sometimes very nice clothes in the supermarket. Arthur?”  
  
“Yeah?”  
  
“You really look great,” Eames said, watching him. “Now tell me that I look great, too. As if we’re going to go on a date or something and you’re trying to flirt with me.”  
  
He swallowed. Eames was wearing a light pink shirt with no tie, a grey coat and jeans. Arthur would have never put those clothes together. Also, Eames had his hands pushed into his pockets and he looked like the only reason he was standing there, staring at Arthur, was that he was waiting for Arthur to say something.  
  
“I’m not very good at flirting,” Arthur said.  
  
Eames smiled a little. “Just try. And don’t stress about it. We’re already engaged, as you know, so you can’t really ruin this anymore by flirting badly.”  
  
“You look good,” Arthur said and took a deep breath. “I don’t know what to think about your clothes. But I like your face.”  
  
“Oh my god, darling, that was terrible.”  
  
“No, it wasn’t.”  
  
“Yes, it was,” Eames said, stepped forward and rested his hands on Arthur’s shoulders. Then he brushed his thumbs against Arthur’s chin again. “But don’t worry. It’s working.”  
  
“What’re you doing?”  
  
“I can’t understand how your chin is so _smooth._ ”  
  
“I just shaved,” he said, hoping desperately that he sounded annoyed and not breathless. He felt a little unsteady on his feet but there was no way he was going to step away now that Eames was touching his face like that.  
  
“You’re going to have to show me later,” Eames said and stepped back. Arthur breathed in. “Okay, we should go."  
  
"Where’re we going?”  
  
“You’ll see.”  
  
  
**  
  
  
It turned out that they went to a photography gallery that Eames claimed was the best in London. There was an exhibition that had a lot of naked men in black and white pictures. They walked through the rooms and didn’t talk much, only sometimes Eames stepped so close to Arthur that he felt trapped in a way that made his heart jump in his chest. He decided to worry about that later. And then Eames said something like _I like the light_ or _look at his ass_ and he could feel Eames’ breath warm against his ear. He hoped he didn’t blush.  
  
The other thing he decided not to think about was that obviously this wasn’t a real date. He didn’t know what it was, but he really needed to remember that he was in London only to do a favor to Eames, and even though they didn’t have an audience now, this wasn’t any more real than Eames’ casual touches on him when Eames was trying to show his family they were together. This wasn’t _real_. He knew that, but it was difficult to remember it when they walked through another exhibition in the same gallery and Eames wanted him to stand at the exactly right spot in front of a huge photograph of flowers in the meadow, and he let Eames touch his hips and push him an inch to the left and then stop there. Eames’ hands stayed and he looked at the photograph and it really was beautiful. He wasn’t sure if he had ever wanted anything to be real more in his life. And wasn’t that something for a man who was working with dreams.  
  
When they left the gallery, the sounds of the city and traffic and people hit him on the face. But Eames placed a hand on the low of his back and walked him through the streets to a restaurant that Eames said was his second favorite in London. The receptionist seemed to recognize Eames’ name, and Eames still had his hand on Arthur’s back and was smiling too, as if he was really showing Arthur off. Arthur hadn’t been aware that he wanted to be shown off until now. This place seemed somewhat fancy but not terribly so, and they had a small table in a quiet corner, and there were a lot of dishes in the menu that Arthur knew, so he didn’t need a dictionary to choose what to eat. They started with wine and Eames asked him questions that were just the right amount of personal – as if Eames was genuinely interested in him but not a curious asshole who tried to get to know all Arthur’s secrets.  
  
“You’re a good date,” Arthur said, after they had finished the main dish and were waiting for the dessert: chocolate cake with chocolate ice cream. Perfect.  
  
“Really?” Eames said, looking up at him. “What convinced you? The naked men in the gallery?”  
  
He realized he was smiling. “Well, that was a ballsy move.”  
  
“Ah,” Eames said, “literally.”  
  
“Fuck off.”  
  
“Hey, tone that down. We’re in a fancy restaurant.”  
  
Arthur bit his lip but still couldn’t stop smiling. “This is very nice.”  
  
“I’m glad,” Eames said. He looked serious now. “This is not a joke, you know.”  
  
“What?”  
  
Eames cleared his throat. “This whole thing, taking you on a date, I don’t think it’s a –“ But then the waitress interrupted them with the dessert, and Eames dropped the rest of the sentence. Arthur took the fork and started with the chocolate cake, but still he couldn’t stop thinking about what Eames had been meaning to say.  
  
“What’s not a joke?”  
  
“I don’t know if you believe this,” Eames said, watching him, “but I don’t usually drunk-text guys to complement their asses. It’s just you.”  
  
He bit his lip, put the fork away, picked up again, took a bite, put the fork away and rubbed the side of his nose.  
  
“I wouldn’t have called anyone else, either,” Eames said, sounding a little nervous now. “Four days ago, when I called you to come here and save me. I wouldn’t have called anyone else.”  
  
“Maybe you don’t have a lot of friends,” Arthur said, looking at the couple at the next table. The man had a nice watch.  
  
“Yeah,” Eames said slowly, “but it’s not like we’re exactly friends, right?”  
  
“We work together,” Arthur said, “sometimes.” But the second he had said it, he felt that it had been the wrong thing to say. He turned to look at Eames and took a deep breath. “I came here, you know. You called me and didn’t even tell me what it was about, and I packed everything and came here.”  
  
“You really packed _everything_ ,” Eames said. Arthur could see him swallow. “I’m still wondering why.”  
  
“Because you didn’t tell me what –“  
  
“No, I meant the other thing. I’m still wondering why you came.”  
  
“Yeah.”  
  
“I’m glad, though,” Eames said. “And a little worried. I think you’re going to kidnap Pringles when you go.”  
  
Arthur bit his lip. The wedding was tomorrow. They hadn’t talked about what would happen after, and he definitely didn’t want talk about that, not now. “I don’t mind,” he said.  
  
Eames blinked. “You don’t mind what?”  
  
“The texts. Don’t get me wrong, they’re terrible. And a little insulting. And generally, I think you should never, in any circumstances, make a comment about your co-worker’s ass. That’s, like, a number one rule of being a decent human being.” Arthur paused. “But I like it.”  
  
“You like being a decent human being.”  
  
“No, I…” Then he realized Eames was kidding. “I hope you know you’re an asshole.”  
  
“Yeah,” Eames said, frowning at him. “I’m just wondering if maybe you like that about me as well.”  
  
“I can’t help it.”  
  
“Well, that’s lucky,” Eames said, stealing some of Arthur’s chocolate cake. “For me. That’s incredibly lucky. Because thinking back to it, I feel like maybe I should’ve approached you a little differently.”  
  
“Approached me?”  
  
“Like, maybe I could have not talked about how much I like the way your trousers fit. You’re right, that’s not… that’s not a good way to make an impression to someone.”  
  
“You certainly made an impression.”  
  
“I could have, I don’t know, said that you’re very good at what you do. You’re incredibly good. I don’t know how you can keep up with all those details.”  
  
“I write them down.”  
  
Eames shook his head. “Incomprehensible. And you’re actually very good with people. You don’t think that, but you are. The way you taught Ariadne how to deal with everything –“  
  
“That was nothing special.”  
  
“Shut up. She had done nothing of it ever before and the rest of us had a lot of experience and you made her feel like that didn’t matter at all. Like she was just as competent, only had had a little less practice.”  
  
“Well, she was amazing, it was nothing what I –“  
  
“And you gave two years of your life to Dom, even though that almost got you killed and even though his projection of Mal kept hurting you in the dreamspace,” Eames said. He tried to avoid Eames’ eyes but found out that he couldn’t. “That must’ve been terrible. I know how much you loved her.”  
  
“Yeah,” he said, his voice coming out thin and useless.  
  
“And last night,” Eames said, smiling a little, “last night when I was panicking about having to meet my ex again, you were very patient me and didn’t slap me on the face and tell me to get it together.”  
  
“I know it can be difficult, seeing someone that you used to be close with and who you haven’t seen in a –“  
  
“Yeah, but it’s not like everyone thinks like that. Someone else would’ve thought that I was being incredibly childish and making a problem out of nothing and that I didn’t have any right to be upset anyway, because I was the one who cheated on her when we were together.”  
  
Arthur frowned.  
  
“And you haven’t said anything about that,” Eames said, “even though you clearly want to.”  
  
“It’s not my business.”  
  
“Come on,” Eames said and stole more of his chocolate cake. “We’re on a date. I’ve been trying to impress you the whole evening. If you’re thinking about what you want to happen tonight, as you probably are at this point of a date, generally, well, then you have the right to be a little curious. And I volunteered that information, you know. You weren’t being nosy.”  
  
He reached across the table and took Eames’ dessert plate. It turned out that Eames’ chocolate cake was just as good as his own. “I don’t like it.”  
  
“You don’t like what?” Eames asked in a quiet voice.  
  
“That you cheated on your partner. Twice.”  
  
“Yeah,” Eames said slowly. “I’m not proud of it. But it’s not a habit or anything.”  
  
“ _Twice,”_ Arthur said. “That’s a habit.”  
  
Eames shook his head. “That’s a bit hard way of looking at it.”  
  
“That’s a realistic way of looking at it.”  
  
“Have you ever cheated on anyone?”  
  
“No.”  
  
Eames sighed. “Well, I always knew you were better than me. That’s probably one of the reasons why I only have the guts to text you when I’m drunk. But –“ He grabbed Arthur’s dessert plate and moved it to his side of the table, “later, when you’ve finished my dessert and I’ve finished yours, I’m going to ask you if you’re tired yet. We could go to a bar. There’s this one gay bar I’d like to take you to. Or you could just call it a night, if you like. Or…” He looked at Arthur, chewing on his lower lip. “I have a place here in London. In Camden Hill. It’s a nice house but don’t ask me how much I paid for it. I also have a cat. If you want to, we could take this date back to my place. You could stay for a night. If you want to.”  
  
Arthur stared at him. “I definitely wish you aren’t going to make me stay in a hotel.”  
  
“Hush,” Eames said, “don’t ruin the mood.”  
  
“It wasn’t a very good mood. We were talking about how you have a habit of cheating on people.”  
  
“I’m really not planning to do it ever again,” Eames said, watching him. “Are you going to finish my dessert or should we go now?”  
  
“Fuck off,” Arthur said and went back to eating the chocolate cake. It was still perfect. He didn’t know what to think about anything else.  
  
  
**  
  
  
“What now?” Eames asked, when they left the restaurant. It was raining a little. Eames took an umbrella out of nowhere and held it up so that Arthur could fit under it. That meant that they were walking side by side, their arms brushing at every step. Arthur could smell Eames’ cologne and underneath, probably something that was Eames himself.  
  
“Well, I’m not staying in a hotel tonight,” Arthur said.  
  
“That’s good, I think,” Eames said and touched Arthur’s back. Then he pulled his hand away. “Can I do that?”  
  
“Yes.”  
  
Eames’ hand settled on the low of Arthur’s back. “You might’ve noticed that I like touching you.”  
  
“You’re a handsy person. You like touching people.”  
  
“No, it’s not about that at all,” Eames said, but he sounded a little preoccupied. “So, here’s what I’m thinking. We go to Bar Soho, have a drink, maybe dance a little, if I can convince you to do that. And then we go home. And you can have some quality time with Pringles.” He was quiet for a second. “Or me.”  
  
“Or both of you.”  
  
Eames laughed. “Yeah.”  
  
“We could watch more of _Game of Thrones_ ,” Arthur said. “Except that I don’t think Pringles should be watching it. How old is she, anyway?”  
  
“Not old enough,” Eames said. “We could trick her to go to one of my many guestrooms and lock her there for a while. So that she won’t have to bear witness to… to us watching _Game of Thrones._ ”  
  
“Absolutely not. We aren’t going to lock her anywhere.”  
  
“We could lock ourselves somewhere, then.”  
  
“Maybe,” Arthur said, trying not to think about the rooms where they could lock themselves into. “So, about this gay bar. Do you want to go there because you’re looking for company?”  
  
“You’re skeptical of me tonight, darling,” Eames said, draped his arm around Arthur’s waist and pulled him closer, which made walking much more difficult, but they managed it. “No, I’m not looking for company. I promise that I’m only going to try to flirt with you, if we go there.”  
  
“Lucky me.”  
  
Eames didn’t answer to that.  
  
“Let’s go there. One drink. And then we go home.”  
  
“Alright,” Eames said, still holding Arthur squeezed against his side.  
  
  
**  
  
  
They had two drinks and then tried to dance a little. It was a disaster. Eames said he wanted to show Arthur a few moves, and then he shifted so close to Arthur that Arthur couldn’t move at all or else he would end up touching Eames, and he couldn’t do that now. Eames put his hands on Arthur’s hips and asked if it was okay, and Arthur said that it was, and the music was loud but not completely annoying, and Eames’ hands were big and warm, and the wine Arthur had had at dinner and the two drinks were probably affecting him. Eames tried to make him step to the right and then to the left and then do something with his hips, and what he did with his hips was that he ended up pressing them against Eames’. The bad thing was that he was kind of half-hard in his pants. But Eames didn’t say anything about that, only kept talking about his stupid moves until Arthur forgot that he was supposed to be embarrassed about how much he liked standing so close to Eames.  
  
“You’re not a dancer,” Eames told him, sounding weirdly happy about that.  
  
“Shut up.”  
  
“You don’t know how cute you looked, trying to get it right.”  
  
“I didn’t…” Arthur sighed. “What are we doing?”  
  
“Well, I think we’re standing on the dance floor and other people are starting to get annoyed about that. But I don’t mind.”  
  
“I really can’t dance,” Arthur said. Eames was so close to him that he didn’t even need to shout to get heard over the music. “I don’t know how people do it. Every time I try, I just feel so incredibly stupid, and I can’t stop thinking about how stupid I look, and –“  
  
“You don’t look stupid,” Eames said, took his hands and wrapped them around his own back. Arthur held his breath. “Okay?”  
  
Arthur nodded.  
  
“Look,” Eames said and moved closer to him, until they were practically leaning against each other. He had his hands low on Arthur’s back and his crotch pressing against Arthur’s and he definitely knew now that Arthur was getting hard, and still didn’t shift away or look at all uncomfortable. “Step back with your right leg,” he said, and when Arthur had managed to figure out which was his right leg, Eames stepped forward with his left. “See? We’re dancing.”  
  
“We aren’t _dancing,_ this is –“  
  
“This is definitely dancing,” Eames said.  
  
“This song isn’t for this kind of dancing.”  
  
“How do you know what the artist was thinking about?” Eames said. His face was impossibly close to Arthur’s. He had stubble on his chin and wrinkles Arthur didn’t normally get to see, and his mouth was _right there._  
  
“Hey,” Arthur said and kissed him.  
  
Eames kissed him back.  
  
He realized that he was _kissing Eames_ and pulled away. He tried to pull away from Eames’ arms, too, but Eames didn’t let go, and he didn’t have the energy to fight it. He took a deep breath and closed his eyes, and then took a deep breath again, and opened his eyes, and looked at the lights that were moving on the ceiling, and everything else except Eames.  
  
“Hello, stranger,” Eames said. “Let’s go back to my place. I’ve got a nice bed.”  
  
“It really looks nice,” Arthur said. He didn’t know at what point Eames had started getting hard, but now he could feel Eames’ dick pressing against his hipbone through the layers of fabric. “How much did you pay for it?”  
  
“For the bed?” Eames asked. He was smiling, but he also looked nervous. “Arthur, you’re trying to distract me.”  
  
“Yeah.”  
  
“Just in case that you didn’t get this yet,” Eames said, “I would very much like to have sex with you. If you feel the same way.”  
  
Arthur swallowed but that didn’t help at all. His heart was in his throat. “Yeah, sure.”  
  
Eames grinned slowly. “ _Yeah, sure?”_  
  
“Yeah.”  
  
“Do you want to leave right now?”  
  
Arthur nodded.  
  
“Great,” Eames said, leaned in and kissed him.  
  
  
**  
  
  
The taxi ride back to Eames’ place took ages. Arthur loosened his tie and closed his eyes, and then he had to open them again, because he had a feeling that Eames was looking at him. Eames was. Arthur supposed he was blushing but the city lights were coming through the windows and painting everything pink and blue, yellow and green, so perhaps Eames didn’t notice. And he felt like he had pretty much showed all his cards at this point anyway. He tried to casually adjust his trousers and Eames grinned to the back of his hand but didn’t say anything, and he glanced at the front of Eames’ trousers and then had to look through the side window. _Fucking hell,_ what was he about to do?  
  
“So,” Eames said, when they were at home and Pringles was following them around and Arthur didn’t know how to get back to kissing but knew that his face was bright red at this point, “ _so,_ what are we going to do?”  
  
“I don’t know,” Arthur said.  
  
“Do you want to eat something?”  
  
He laughed without meaning to. “I don’t think I could swallow anything right now.”  
  
Eames raised his eyebrows.  
  
Arthur cleared his throat. “About that –“  
  
“Hey,” Eames said and stepped closer to him. They were in the living room and Pringles was complaining on the sofa. Arthur took a step back without thinking about it.  
  
“I don’t know what you want,” he said and tried not to sound terribly nervous about the aspect of ruining everything, “but I don’t… I don’t know what you think that I’m like, but I’m not really…”  
  
“Arthur,” Eames said, “darling, do you want to kiss me?”  
  
“Yeah,” Arthur said, but he couldn’t do that right now. Even Pringles seemed worried about him. “I don’t do blowjobs.”  
  
“Okay,” Eames said, looking at him.  
  
“I just don’t like it. I don’t know why. I’ve tried but I just… I can’t have anything in my mouth, it makes me…”  
  
“Darling,” Eames said, walked to the sofa and sat down. He was definitely doing that on purpose. He knew he would look smaller and less threatening in a way that Arthur couldn’t quite grasp. And it was working. “It’s good that we’re having this conversation, because there’s some stuff that I don’t like and I’d much rather tell you here than in the bedroom. But can I just ask… so, you don’t want to be at the giving end of a blowjob?”  
  
“Yeah,” Arthur said, pulling his shoulders back and taking a deep breath, “no.”  
  
“What about,” Eames said slowly, “what about if I wanted to blow you? Because I like that. Would you want me to?”  
  
“I…”  
  
“No?”  
  
“I always feel that I should return the favor,” Arthur said. _Shit._ He absolutely hated talking about this. “I just can’t enjoy it.”  
  
“Alright,” Eames said and patted his knees. “No blowjobs, then. What about kissing? You kissed me in the bar.”  
  
“Kissing is fine. I like kissing.”  
  
Eames grinned at him. “Great. It just happens that I like it too. What about other oral stuff?”  
  
“I don’t really do…” But he wasn’t exactly sure what he should have on that list.  
  
“Okay,” Eames said and crossed his legs. He seemed impossibly relaxed, as if they were talking about the weather. That was actually a little annoying. Arthur thought about how irritating it was that Eames had the nerve to look so calm when they were talking about what kind of stuff Arthur didn’t like to do in bed. And then suddenly he felt a little better himself. “How about this?” Eames asked. “I don’t expect you to put your mouth anywhere on me, except maybe on my mouth when we’re kissing. And I won’t suck your dick. But if I feel like, well, licking you somewhere else, I’m going to ask you first, and you can tell me to stop at any time. Obviously.”  
  
Arthur frowned.  
  
“I really like your ass,” Eames said and smiled a little. At least he seemed nervous now.  
  
“You might want to lick my –“  
  
“Yeah.”  
  
“I’m going to shower first.”  
  
“I appreciate that,” Eames said, “but I also have to say that hygiene isn’t the first thing on my mind when I’m having sex.”  
  
Arthur cleared his throat. Then he nodded. Then he walked to the sofa, picked Pringles up and put her on the floor, and sat down next to Eames. “What about fucking me?”  
  
Eames looked at him. “If you want me to, sure.”  
  
“Yeah?”  
  
“Fuck yeah,” Eames said and smiled a little. Then he frowned. “The other way around, maybe not. You can put your finger in my ass if you like, that’s good sometimes and sometimes not. But anything else, just… doesn’t work for me.”  
  
“So, we’re lucky we have something we both want to do.”  
  
“Yeah,” Eames said, “yeah, we are. Anything else?”  
  
“What do you mean, anything else?”  
  
“Do you have…” Eames shrugged. “I don’t know. I kind of like rough sex sometimes. Or a little bit of a role play. With someone that I trust. And I trust you. But I’m perfectly fine with, just, you know… being as gentle as we can.”  
  
“Eames,” Arthur said and bit his lip, “I’m kind of very nervous about this.”  
  
“Yeah,” Eames said, looking at him. Then he raised his hand and placed it on Arthur’s thigh. “I know. I’m nervous too, just not as nervous as I’ve been about showing you to my family. And I’m pretty good at acting calm.” He paused. “I could kiss you now, if you like.”  
  
“Yeah,” Arthur said, and that was when Pringles jumped in between them.  
  
  
**  
  
  
They locked themselves in Eames’ bedroom. Pringles meowed behind the closed door for a moment and then apparently either gave up or began planning something bigger. Arthur wished it was the first option. At that point, they were kissing in Eames’ bed, and Eames was trying to get rid of Arthur’s trousers, and Arthur was trying to do the same for Eames, and also he couldn’t stop thinking that he should shower.  
  
“Hey,” he said, when neither of them were wearing trousers anymore and Eames was unbuttoning his shirt with divine patience. “Maybe I should take a shower. In case you’re…”  
  
“In case I’m going to fuck you,” Eames said and kept on unbuttoning his shirt. “So, you’re that sort of a guy.”  
  
“What sort?” he asked. He had climbed onto Eames at some point. Their legs were entangled and when he shifted, he could feel the skin on Eames’ thigh brush against his. All his hair stuck out.  
  
“The sort who freaks out if they see shit on a condom,” Eames said very casually.  
  
Arthur swallowed. “I don’t _freak out._ ”  
  
“Listen,” Eames said, took a deep breath and raised his hand to stroke Arthur’s hair. “You can shower if you want. But no need for anything else. Sex is messy. I don’t mind.”  
  
“I want to shower.”  
  
Eames nodded slowly. “Alright. Can I come?”  
  
“To the shower?”  
  
“Yeah,” Eames said, still stroking his hair. “I bet you look lovely, standing there wet and naked and trying to figure out if you’ve rubbed yourself clean well enough for me, you idiot.”  
  
Arthur stared at him for a few seconds. “Okay.” Then he climbed out of the bed, which was a loss because Eames stopped stroking his hair. But it had to be done. He unbuttoned the rest of his shirt and then took off his socks and boxers as well, and walked to the ensuite, trying not to look at Eames who followed him, undressed quickly and sat down on the closed toilet seat with his knees sprawled wide and his dick hard. “You look…” Arthur started, but there was absolutely no way to finish that sentence.  
  
“Oh, really?” Eames asked and crossed his arms over his chest. He was grinning. “I was never sure if you liked me or not. I honestly couldn’t tell. You seemed so annoyed at me most of the time.”  
  
“You’re annoying as hell,” Arthur said and turned on the water.  
  
Eames stopped talking, which was probably for the best because Arthur couldn’t have concentrated on two things at the same time anyway. He was too distracted already. He washed himself as quickly as he could but couldn’t help glancing at Eames when he pushed his fingers into the crease of his ass. Eames blinked and swallowed and then smiled a little, but still looked like Arthur had hit him on the face.  
  
When he was finished, Arthur tried to pick the towel hanging on the wall, but Eames caught it before him and dried him with it. He meant to say he could do it himself, but it was too lovely, having Eames’ hands all over him like that, not groping, just… just taking care of him. He coughed a little and Eames took his face in between his hands and stroked his lower lip with his fingertips.  
  
“You want me to take a shower or do you think I’ll do?” Eames asked.  
  
“You’ll do,” Arthur said. Eames smelled of wine and deodorant and sweat and it was perfect.  
  
They got back to bed. Luckily it seemed that Pringles had given up on them. They kissed for a little bit, and then kissed with Arthur’s dick pressed against the crook of Eames’ hips in a way that made him hasty and breathless, and then kissed with Eames’ dick in Arthur’s hand, and then kissed with Eames’s fingers groping their way from behind Arthur’s balls towards his hole. Then Eames told him to wait and he almost elbowed Eames on the face at that, because he couldn’t _wait_ , not _now,_ but Eames only took a condom and lube from the dresser. Soon enough, Eames’ fingers were slick and a little bit cold but not too much, and one of them was circling gently against the tight muscles at Arthur’s entrance.  
  
“You’re clenching pretty tight in here, darling,” Eames said and kissed Arthur’s ear. “We could do something else.”  
  
“No,” Arthur said, “no, can you just… it’s going to take a while, but if you just…”  
  
“What do you think,” Eames said, pulled his finger out again, took Arthur’s cock in his hand and gave him a few strokes, “what do you think if I kissed you a little bit?”  
  
“Eames –“  
  
“Yeah,” Eames said, “yeah. Exactly. _There._ ”  
  
“I can’t understand why you’d want to do that.”  
  
Eames snorted. “Well, I do. I want to do that. If you want me to.”  
  
“I’m not sure. No one’s ever…”  
  
“Do you want to try?” Eames asked. He was still holding Arthur’s dick in his hand but he wasn’t doing anything with it. Arthur thought about saying ‘no’ like he normally would, a ‘no’ to everything he wasn’t sure about, because what if he didn’t want it after all and he would have to tell Eames to stop, and Eames would, of course, but that would ruin the mood, and he didn’t want to ruin the mood, he wanted it to be perfect. _He_ wanted to be perfect so that Eames would like him and would want to have sex with him again, and again, and again – “Hey,” Eames said, “what’re you thinking about? You look suddenly very worried. Maybe we should try something else –“  
  
“No,” Arthur said, “no, it’s just… I’ll tell you to stop if I don’t like it.”  
  
“Good,” Eames said and kissed him. Then he put his hands on Arthur’s hips and pushed him a little. “I kind of need you to get on your elbows and knees, darling, if you can.”  
  
Arthur did. He settled onto his elbows and knees, hang his head low and tried to see what Eames was doing, and then he gave up on that, when Eames pressed a wet kiss on his back. He took a deep breath. He was kind of losing a grip here, because he didn’t know what to expect, and he hated not knowing what to expect, and also Eames had a good view on his ass now, and he had always suspected that he was a bit too hairy down there. But then Eames licked down his back and stopped to say that he was doing great, and then licked the point where his ass started, and licked down in between his cheeks, and it was weird, and he didn’t know if he liked it, but Eames’ hands on his thighs were nice. And then Eames grabbed his dick and started stroking him, and in a few seconds he realized vaguely that he was pushing back against Eames’ tongue.  
  
“So,” Eames said a moment later and kissed Arthur’s left cheek, “what do you think? Can I go on?”  
  
“Yeah,” Arthur said. He sounded almost as breathless as Eames.  
  
“Great,” Eames said and patted him on the ass. “I’ll lick you a little bit more and then try to get my finger in there again, if that’s alright with you.”  
  
“Yeah,” he said, closing his eyes and trying not sound like he was about come right now. “Thanks for the update.”  
  
“You’re welcome,” Eames said, and then he stopped talking again.  
  
This time, it only took a moment before Eames had slipped his finger inside Arthur. He moved it a little bit back and forth and then in circles, and every time Arthur began to get distracted in a way that wasn’t exactly good, Eames wrapped his fingers around Arthur’s dick. And then there was another finger, and then another, and Arthur was panting and kind of very much wanting to have Eames’ cock in there too, right now, and also didn’t, because it wouldn’t fit, and he couldn’t remember how the hell he had ever managed to have anyone’s cock in his ass, because it just didn’t make sense that a cock would fit in there, right? But he also had a hard time trying to keep on his elbows and knees, because Eames was crooking his fingers now, and one of them kept brushing against Arthur’s prostate, and it was weird too, he hadn’t remembered it felt so weird. But when Eames stroked his dick at the same time when he crooked his fingers, it all made sense. And then Arthur fell on his face.  
  
“Oh my god,” Eames said, grabbing Arthur’s hips and rolling him onto his back, “I’m sorry, is this taking too long for you?”  
  
“Fuck you,” Arthur said, trying to breathe. Eames was sitting in between his sprawled legs now, smiling at him, like this was funny or something. He was probably smiling too. “Fuck _me._ ”  
  
“Yeah, sure, darling, I’m about to,” Eames said, touched his knees and pushed them a little more apart. “You think you can take me now?”  
  
“I don’t know.”  
  
“You want me to get my fingers back in?”  
  
“No,” he said, “no. I want your cock. We can try.”  
  
“I’m not that big, you know,” Eames said. “Sure?”  
  
“Yeah,” Arthur said and watched as Eames took the condom and put it on. “You have issues?”  
  
“Only a little,” Eames said, frowning at his own dick and then giving it a few strokes. “I think I’m ready.”  
  
“Your cock is perfect,” Arthur said, taking deep breaths while he still could. “Any bigger and I wouldn’t let you get it any near to my ass.”  
  
Eames laughed and then fell silent. He made Arthur raise his hips a little and pushed a pillow under him, and then he arranged himself so that he had one of Arthur’s legs up on his shoulder and his dick lined up to Arthur’s hole, and then he asked if Arthur was ready. Arthur absolutely wasn’t but said yes anyway, and Eames pushed into him by an inch.  
  
“ _Bloody hell_ ,” Eames said, panting.  
  
“Yeah,” Arthur said, “yeah, this is… can you…”  
  
“Can I what?”  
  
“In,” Arthur said, “and out.”  
  
So, Eames pushed a little bit in, and then out, and then in again, and then out, and when Arthur finally thought he was all the way in, it turned out that he wasn’t. And he was talking some kind of nonsense about how pretty Arthur looked, and how tight his ass was, and how he couldn’t believe that it had taken them five years to get to this point, and how helpless he had felt two years ago when he had realized Arthur had pretty much disappeared with Cobb, and how scared he had been that Arthur might get killed, and how weird it had been to see Arthur in the Fischer job, and badly he had wanted to say something but hadn’t been able to figure out what that was, and how he had written Arthur a lot of texts he had never sent, and some of them had been correctly spelled, he was almost sure of that, and how perfect it was that Arthur was letting him to do this, and he would’ve been perfectly alright with just jerking each other off or something like that, but now Arthur was letting him _fuck_ him, and that was incredible, and didn’t Arthur know what he looked like, didn’t he know, didn’t he really know, didn’t he -  
  
“Eames,” Arthur managed to say, because Eames’ cock was hitting his prostrate at every thrust now and Eames’ hand on his dick needed to catch up. And somehow, Eames seemed to understand that. His fingers on Arthur’s dick tightened, but then his rhythm faltered altogether and he swore and pushed inside Arthur once more and then stayed there, panting against Arthur’s neck and shaking.  
  
“Sorry,” Eames said and kissed his throat, “I couldn’t –“  
  
“No,” he said and grabbed his own dick while Eames pulled out of him. But Eames batted his hand away and replaced it with his own, and pushed his finger back into Arthur’s hole, and then jerked him off in a few strokes.  
  
  
**  
  
  
“I’m just going to take the condom off,” Eames said and climbed out of the bed.  
  
“Yeah,” Arthur said. He was still shaking. He had cum all over his stomach and thighs and pubic hair and didn’t want to think about it, not right now, because he would have to get up and go to the bathroom and clean himself and find himself a new pair of boxers, and for that he would have to go to the guestroom where he was staying, and he just couldn’t. He felt tired and happy and thoroughly fucked.  
  
Eames stayed in the ensuite for a minute. When he came back, Arthur had managed to open his eyes.  
  
“Was there?”  
  
“What?” Eames asked.  
  
“Shit.”  
  
Eames grinned. “Just a little bit. That’s what you’re thinking about?”  
  
“No,” Arthur said, “no, absolutely not. I don’t think I can move.”  
  
“You don’t have to move.”  
  
“I’m a mess.”  
  
“I said I like messy sex.”  
  
He snorted.  
  
“I can wipe you clean if you want.”  
  
“No,” he said, “no, it won’t work, I’ll just feel sticky. I need to go to the bathroom, I just can’t –“  
  
“I could carry you,” Eames said.  
  
Arthur blinked. “What?”  
  
“I’m pretty sure that I can,” Eames said, “unless you’re much heavier than you look.”  
  
“You can’t _carry_ me to the bathroom.”  
  
“Why not?” Eames asked. “No one’s going to see. I’ve been going to gym. Let me show off a little.”  
  
“I’m not actually tiny, you know.”  
  
“Yeah, sure,” Eames said, put his arms around Arthur and lifted him up.  
  
  
**  
  
  
Arthur came back from the ensuite on his own feet. He had taken a quick shower, and now he was naked and tired and a little cold and all his stuff was in the other room. Eames, however, had tucked himself under the duvet and looked like he was ready to go to sleep. Last night, they had shared a bed in the country house. Maybe they could do it again. Maybe if Arthur asked, Eames would let him sleep in his bed.  
  
“Just get your stuff from the other room and come back here,” Eames said.  



	6. The Wedding

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> _"Allergies."_

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> The second last proper chapter! And in this one, there's a wedding and some chocolate cake and they also dance! AND this is the second time in the known memory of humankind that I'm using CAPS LOCK in fiction. WHAT.

Arthur woke up feeling happy.  
  
Well, that was weird. He usually woke up wondering what the hell was wrong with him, why he slept so poorly, why he had chosen a career that was interesting and exciting and challenging and also constantly putting him into situations he never wanted to be put into, why he was so lonely, what Dom was doing, why he still cared about what Dom was doing, and why he didn’t have a cat. Now, all that was just… missing. Perhaps because there seemed to be a cat sleeping on his chest. Or because -  
  
_ Bloody fucking hell. _   
  
He was lying on his back and didn’t want to disturb Pringles, so he carefully turned his head to the right. His neck cracked, but that wasn’t the worst of it. The worst was that Eames was  _ right there _ , lying on the bed next to him, which shouldn’t have been surprising at all because this was Eames’ bed, and Arthur was in Eames’ bed because THEY HAD HAD SEX LAST NIGHT.  
  
He breathed in and out, trying to make sense of it. The facts were that they had had sex, and… and he really couldn’t think about anything else. He had had sex. With Eames. Eames and him. Sex. In this bed. Last night. Out of the blue. Just... well, maybe not so out of the blue, because there  _ had  _ been a few hints that something like this might happen one day, like, all those inappropriate texts Eames had sent him while drunk. Or the fact that ever since he had met Eames, he had thought Eames was annoyingly good-looking and competent and kind of… nice in a weird way. And now that he was thinking about it, it seemed a little odd that when Eames had told his family he had a boyfriend, he had used Arthur’s name and then asked Arthur to come to London to be the fake boyfriend called Arthur.  
  
At least Eames was still asleep. Arthur blinked and told himself to calm down. Eames was asleep, and so Arthur would have time to figure out what to think about all this. Maybe Eames regretted the sex. Or maybe – and this was the worst part – maybe it had been just sex for Eames. Maybe it hadn’t actually meant anything. Or maybe – and this was actually worse – it had been a joke. Arthur had always suspected that Eames’ drunk-texts were probably jokes, because if Eames  _ actually  _ liked him, why the hell Eames wouldn’t just say something? Why would he flirt with Arthur and then disappear for months? Well, obviously Arthur knew that sometimes a man needed to escape the government, the police, or an angry client with powerful enemies, but other than that?  
  
Or maybe it hadn’t been casual sex for Eames and not a joke either. Maybe – and actually  _ this  _ was the worst scenario – maybe it had been part of the game. Maybe Eames had reasoned that they were pretending to be boyfriends and engaged and deeply in love and therefore having sex was included. And it seemed that he had been right.  
  
Arthur bit his lip. It was still early in the morning. If he had any luck, Eames would be asleep for  _ hours,  _ so he would have plenty of time to panic. And then he would act just as casually as Eames and Eames would never find out that he had been freaking out about them having sex. Yes. That was a great plan. It was going to work. It was going to -  
  
Pringles jumped down from Arthur’s chest, climbed onto Eames and then walked across Eames’ face. Arthur watched with sinking horror as Eames frowned and blinked and then opened his eyes.  
  
“Good morning,” Eames said. He looked a little surprised. Then something shifted on his face and he looked not just a little surprised. “ _ Holy shit. _ We had sex.”  
  
“Yeah,” Arthur said. He wanted to sound cool but there was no way he could manage that now.  
  
“Was that…” Eames frowned again. Arthur really didn’t want him to be frowning while he was thinking about them having sex. “Are you alright?”  
  
“What? Yeah. Yes. Perfect. Very cool.”  
  
“Hmm,” Eames said.  
  
“I’ve had sex before.”  
  
“Yeah,” Eames said, “I know, I didn’t mean it like that. I meant…” He paused. “I meant that you and me, we hadn’t exactly…” He paused again. “I hope you don’t feel that I…” And he paused again. “I wouldn’t want to feel that you…” And he paused  _ again. _ “Do you want coffee?”  
  
“Yes,” Arthur said, “yes, please.”  
  
“Great,” Eames said and jumped out of the bed. He was naked. He seemed to realize that at the same moment than Arthur did, froze for a second, and then kept walking. Arthur stared at his ass. Seeing Eames naked felt somehow more intimate now when all he was thinking about was that THEY HAD HAD SEX. He cleared his throat and reminded himself that he needed to act cool and like it wasn’t a big deal, actually the biggest fucking deal in a long time, or actually not so long, because just a few months ago they had succeeded with inception and that had been a pretty big deal too, but in a very different way. Not like this. Nothing was a big deal like  _ this _ .  
  
“I’m just going to go make coffee,” Eames said. He was wearing boxers and socks and he seemed a little disoriented.  
  
“Yeah,” Arthur said. “I’ll be there in a second.” Then he thought about something. “Unless you want me to, well, not be there.”  
  
“No,” Eames said, blinking, “no, I don’t… damn, Arthur, I want you to be there, alright?”  
  
“Okay.”  
  
“Good,” Eames said. “I’ll see you in the kitchen.”  
  
“Yes,” Arthur said and watched as Eames walked out of the room. He rolled onto his back and Pringles settled on his chest. He was going to stay in Eames’ bedroom forever or however long it would take him to feel normal again.  
  
  
**  
  
  
“Hi,” Eames said, looking up at Arthur. “That took you a while.”  
  
“Yeah,” Arthur said, trying to keep his eyes on the coffee machine. Pringles was in his feet, apparently trying to trip him.  
  
“I thought you might have dropped dead.”  
  
“I didn’t,” Arthur said, “sorry.” Well, that sounded wrong, but he didn’t know how to fix it. “I was just…”  
  
“I drank all the coffee already,” Eames said, nodding at the coffee pan, “and then I made more coffee for you. And now I kind of wish that I would’ve made you  c rêpes.”  
  
Arthur cleared his throat. He would have probably started crying if it had turned out that Eames had made him  _ c rêpes _ in the morning after they had had sex. _Sex._ With Eames. Oh, god, and now he was thinking about it again and he really shouldn’t have been thinking about it, because how was he ever going to get on with his life? Or even through breakfast?  
  
“I kind of wish you wouldn’t look so worried,” Eames said.  
  
“I can’t help it,” Arthur said. “It’s my face.”  
  
“I kind of think it’s your personality.”  
  
“That, too.” He poured himself coffee, put a slice of bread into the toaster and told himself that they should remember to buy cheese. Then he remembered he didn’t actually live here. He made himself a sandwich and wondered why Eames wasn’t saying anything and if that was a bad sign or not or maybe not a sign at all. Maybe Eames was thinking about something else. Or someone else. _Shit._  
  
“Arthur –“  
  
Arthur sat down at the table with his cup of coffee and his sandwich. “Yeah?”  
  
Eames was chewing on his lower lip, looking very thoughtful. “I kind of think we should talk.”  
  
Arthur swallowed. “Yeah?”  
  
“Don’t you?”  
  
Well, that totally depended on what Eames was going to say. “I don’t know.”  
  
“At least…” Eames said and took a deep breath. “But it was good, right? I thought it was good. And I wasn’t really drunk, just a little tipsy, so I don’t think I would’ve ignored you, but I just need to… I didn’t talk you into anything that you didn’t want to… did I?”  
  
“No,” Arthur said, “no, you didn’t talk me into anything, Eames.”  
  
“Honestly?”  
  
“Yes,” he said and made himself look Eames in the eyes. Eames squinted at him and he hoped Eames couldn’t see from his eyes everything that he had been thinking about this morning, including how much he needed Eames to have meant the sex.  
  
“Good,” Eames said slowly, “I’m glad. You just seem a little… worried.”  
  
“It’s my personality,” Arthur said and bit the sandwich.  
  
Eames smiled a little. “Yeah, I know. So, we’re alright?”  
  
Arthur nodded.  
  
“And how about… do you still want to go the wedding today? With me?”  
  
Oh, shit. The wedding. They were going to go to Eames’ sister’s wedding today, and the whole day would be about love and commitment. “Yeah. Of course.”  
  
“Because if you don’t, that’s perfectly fine,” Eames said, watching him carefully. “I kind of pushed this at you, I know. If you want to stay home, that’s alright, I’ll go alone and you can stay here with Pringles and I’ll come back in the evening and then we can…” Eames paused. “Or maybe you want to go home to Chicago. I’d understand that too.”  
  
Arthur shook his head. “I don’t want to go to Chicago.” He thought Eames seemed relieved but maybe he was just imagining things.  
  
“Okay,” Eames said, “good. So, how about the wedding?”  
  
“I’ll be in the wedding. If you want me there.”  
  
“Yeah,” Eames said, “yeah, I definitely want you there. That’s kind of why I tricked you to come here from the other side of the globe, to be there in that wedding with me.”  
  
“Okay,” Arthur said, “good. So, we’re going.”  
  
“Yeah,” Eames said. “But we should also talk.”  
  
Arthur cleared his throat.  
  
“But maybe that could wait until after the wedding,” Eames said slowly. “Because we kind of have to be there in three hours, for the ceremony, and I feel like the kind of conversation we’re going to have will be a little… risky to manage in a tight timeline. So maybe we should talk in the evening.”  
  
“Sounds good,” Arthur said. He would have the whole day to figure out how to seem cool about all this. He finished his breakfast and then asked if he could take a shower first, and Eames agreed. He stood up.  
  
“Arthur,” Eames said. “Just tell me something. I don’t think I can function today if I don’t know at least this. Are you glad that you had sex with me? Or is it…”  
  
“I’m glad,” Arthur said and then escaped to the bathroom. Somehow Pringles managed to sneak in there with him, so he spent a while sitting on a closed toilet seat, petting her and lying to himself that everything was going to be fine.  
  
  
**  
  
  
“What?” he asked, when they were ready to leave and Eames was staring at him.  
  
“Nothing,” Eames said. “You just look very good.”  
  
Arthur opened his mouth, closed it and opened it again. “Thanks. You look good, too.”  
  
Eames smiled a little. “Well, thank you, Arthur. And hey, you forgot something.”  
  
He frowned. He had checked everything twice. “What?”  
  
“Come here.”  
  
He stepped at Eames. Eames rolled his eyes and crooked his finger, and he stepped closer still, until he was standing right in front of Eames. Eames smelled very nice and also standing so close to him kind of made Arthur think about how they had had sex last night.  
  
Eames leaned in, kissed him briefly and then pulled away. He looked a little nervous. “Okay?”  
  
“Yeah,” Arthur said. _Fucking hell._ He was definitely blushing. Why couldn’t he just be _cool?_ “I need my… I need my keys, I don’t know where they are, I need to check –“  
  
“Arthur,” Eames said, “you don’t need your keys today. You don’t have the key to this house. But we can get you a copy later. Come on, we need to leave now or we’re going to be late.”  
  
  
**  
  
  
They would have been late if Eames hadn’t broken a few speed limits on the way. Arthur decided to point out later how irresponsible it was to go over a speed limit. Now he was too nervous to speak. The ceremony was outside the city, in a church that looked like it was from the Medieval times or something. The yard and the road to church had cars parked all over them and there was the sound of a highway coming from somewhere, but otherwise it was exactly like from a Jane Austen movie. Arthur hadn’t known he appreciated that kind of romantic aesthetic until now. It was raining a little, and Eames pulled an umbrella out of nowhere and draped his arm around Arthur’s waist to pull him closer. They walked to the church where everyone else seemed to be seated already. Eames left the umbrella at the door, took Arthur’s hand and they walked down the aisle to the front row, where Eames’ mother was already sitting, holding a handkerchief.  
  
“You’re late,” she whispered, when they sat down next to her. She sounded like she had been crying.  
  
“We aren’t _late,_ ” Eames said, and then the music began.  
  
The ceremony, too, seemed like it was from a Jane Austen movie, but maybe that was because Arthur had never actually been in a big church wedding like this. Emma and Ruby walked down the aisle together, then Emma accidentally dropped her shoe and Ruby held her by the elbow while she put it back on, and everyone laughed except Eames’ mother, who was crying a little. The priest talked about how love was the greatest thing, and Eames’ mother cried a little more, and Emma and Ruby seemed a little nervous but definitely in a good way, and somewhere there was a child crying, and there was a sound of the rain falling against the roof. Eames took the handkerchief from his mother.  
  
“Allergies,” he whispered when Arthur glanced at him. Then he sniffled. “Look how happy they are.”  
  
It all went quite fast. The priest told Emma and Ruby to love and cherish each other for all of their lives, then told them they were now a wife and a wife, and they kissed and then kissed again and laughed and then kissed once more, and the priest smiled patiently. Eames’ mother was holding Eames’ hand and Eames was holding Arthur’s hand and Arthur didn’t know what he was thinking, except that he was afraid he was going to be very lonely in a few days.  
  
  
**  
  
  
“That was nice,” he said, when they were sitting in the car again, ready to drive to the country house where the reception was going to be. It was still raining a little and Eames was drying his eyes in a handkerchief.  
  
“I didn’t cry,” Eames said.  
  
“Yeah, you did.”  
  
“Yeah, I did,” Eames said and smiled at him. “Oh, god, I wish they’re going to be happy.”  
  
“I’m sure they are.”  
  
“I’m not,” Eames said and took a deep breath. Arthur turned to look at him, and after a while he looked back. “The thing about my dad,” he said slowly, “I mean, about that he died like that, suddenly, when I was a kid. I think I kind of… realized that anything can happen, to anyone, anytime. Bad things happen. And we can’t stop them, can’t even see them coming.”  
  
Arthur cleared his throat. “Eames –“  
  
“I know we aren’t supposed to think like that. And I’m not a… I’m not a terribly pessimistic person, you know. I’m generally quite cheerful. I usually think that things will sort themselves out. But I feel like maybe I lost the… faith that the universe will somehow protect me, I mean, that bad things will happen to other people and not me. When my dad died. And I never got that back.”  
  
Arthur reached in and took Eames’ hand.  
  
“I just hope nothing bad will happen to them,” Eames said, looking through the windscreen, “in a very long time.”  
  
“Yeah.”  
  
Eames sighed. “Weddings. Crazy, right?”  
  
“Yeah.”  
  
“You didn’t even cry.”  
  
“Yeah. No.”  
  
“What are you, made of stone?”  
  
“No,” Arthur said, “I’m not made of stone.” He squeezed Eames’ hand and then let go, and Eames looked at him silently for a while and then started the car.  
  
  
**  
  
  
“Oh, you must be Arthur, darling,” said an old woman who was shaking hands with Arthur with a surprisingly powerful grip. “I’m Eames’ grandmother. I don’t know if he’s told you this, dear, but I’ve set up five online dating profiles for him. I’m very relieved that he’s got a boyfriend now, because the dating scene these days, it’s just crazy. These young men, they just keep sending me pictures of their genitals, and I don’t know what to do with them, really, I like young men very much but their penises aren’t the best part of them. But it seems rude to just delete those pictures. And also, what if one of these lovely boys dies one day? And the body is so badly damaged there’s nothing except his penis for the police to recognize him, but they aren’t sure, and then they ask for someone to send a picture of the poor boy’s penis, so that they can confirm the identity, and wouldn’t it be a pity then if I had deleted the pictures? So, I’ve made a file out of them.” She paused and frowned. “You aren’t there, darling, are you? In my file? Eames hasn’t told me how you met, but I think I would remember if I had seen your –“  
  
“Grandma!” Eames said, appearing out of nowhere. “I see that you’ve met Arthur. I’m so glad. What did you tell him?”  
  
“Nothing,” Eames’ grandmother said, “absolutely nothing, only a few things about online dating.”  
  
“I’m sorry,” Eames whispered to Arthur and then took Arthur’s hand in his. “Great. So, how are you, Grandma? How are we going to celebrate your birthday this autumn? I can’t believe you’re about to turn one hundred and one.”  
  
“It’s been a blast,” Eames’ grandmother said to Arthur, “especially lately when there’s so much good stuff on television. But I’ve seen hard times too. My husband passed away in the seventies. That was hard. But it only took me ten years to get back onto my feet. And it helped that Eames was around. He was a very wild kid, always falling into pools and stuff. I was a little worried about him, really, I thought he might have some tendencies towards criminal activity. I was so relieved when he chose to make an honest career out of online poker.”  
  
“Yes,” Eames said, pulling Arthur closer to him. “Well, maybe Arthur and I should go now, there’re so many people here who haven’t met Arthur yet, and so little time –“  
  
“No,” Eames’ grandmother said, “no, no, no, I want to know a little more about you, Arthur. What do you do for a living, dear? How old are you? What are your parents like? How about politics? Religion? And what are your favorite movies? And where did you meet Eames? Are you going to stay in England or in… whatever was the name of the country where you are from? Did you always know you want to get married or did you decide that when you fell in love with Eames? And do you want children?”  
  
Arthur cleared his throat. “I don’t think I want children.” He glanced at Eames. _Me neither,_ Eames mouthed at him. Well, that was good -  
  
And then he remembered again that they weren’t actually together.  
  
“Great,” Eames’ grandmother said. “I’ll add that to your file. How about allergies?”  
  
“We need to go now,” Eames said, took a firm grip of Arthur’s elbow and pulled him away from her. Arthur let himself be dragged away, and when Eames let go of his elbow, he wrapped his arm around Arthur’s waist instead. That was good. They found a shadowy corner and stopped there, and when a few people waved at Eames from across the room, Eames pretended not to see them.  
  
“Too much people,” Eames muttered. His hand on Arthur’s back was warm. “And too much cake.”  
  
“I think it’s great that they have six different kinds of cake.”  
  
“It’s a trap,” Eames said, “because of course I need to taste them all.”  
  
“The chocolate cake was my favorite.”  
  
“I knew that.” Eames sighed. “My cousin Andrew is approaching us and he always wants me to tell him about online poker. Can I kiss you?”  
  
“Yeah,” Arthur said.  
  
Eames kissed him. “That should distract him,” Eames said and then kissed Arthur again. “Sorry,” Eames said after he had pulled back again. “I got a little distracted too.”  
  
“I don’t mind,” Arthur said, hoping his ears weren’t pink.  
  
Eames kissed him again.  
  
“You don’t want kids?”  
  
“No,” Eames said, holding Arthur’s face in his hands. “I don’t think I’d be a very good father. And I don’t think people should have kids unless they actually want to have kids.”  
  
Arthur nodded. “Your grandmother seems nice.”  
  
Eames laughed. “I’m terribly sorry that I didn’t save you before she started talking about young men’s penises.”  
  
“I don’t have anything against young men’s penises.”  
  
“How young?” Eames said, grinning. “I hope I’m not too old for you.”  
  
“You’re perfect,” Arthur said. Then he realized what he had said and frowned furiously. Eames kept touching his face. He wanted Eames to touch his face every day from now on and never stop.  
  
Oh, _shit_ , maybe he had eaten too much of that chocolate cake.  
  
“You’re blushing,” Eames said.  
  
Arthur glared at him. “Never tell a person who’s blushing that they’re blushing. You’re only making it worse."  
  
"Well, you heard what my grandmother said," Eames said. “I have criminal tendencies. Do you want to dance?”  
  
“Absolutely not.”  
  
Eames kept looking at him.  
  
“Maybe,” he said. The band was playing something that was definitely from the eighties and sounded a lot like his childhood. “What kind of dancing are we talking about?”  
  
“Well, this is a wedding, so I’ll probably get a little handsy,” Eames said, stroking Arthur’s hair. Arthur kind of wanted to point out that he had spent ten minutes fixing his hair and he didn’t want it messed up, but also he very much wanted Eames’ fingers in his hair, so, yeah, that was a paradox. “But I promise I won’t put my hands on your ass.”  
  
“Don’t make me promises you can’t keep.”  
  
“Have a little faith in me,” Eames said. The band started playing _Big in Japan._ “Come on, this is our song.”  
  
“Are you famous in Japan?”  
  
“More like wanted dead or alive,” Eames said and took Arthur’s hand.  
  
Arthur had a feeling that the song and the way they were dancing didn’t quite fit, but on the other hand, he wasn’t an expert in dancing. He followed Eames’ lead, which meant that when Eames wrapped his arms around him and pulled him close and kissed his neck, he did the same except for the kissing part, because at least twenty of Eames’ relatives were looking at them and he was feeling a little self-conscious. But soon enough the music changed into something slower and softer and cheesier and they weren’t the only people who were more hugging than dancing. Eames lowered his hands until they were on Arthur’s ass, and Arthur thought about pointing out that Eames was an idiot and a liar, but that might have ruined the mood, and he didn’t want that. Everything was perfect.  
  
“I really like your ass,” Eames said to his ear. His breathing was warm and moist, and he licked Arthur’s ear a little, but that was probably an accident. “It wasn’t meant to be a joke. I just kept saying it and then it started to feel like a joke.”  
  
“Okay,” Arthur said.  
  
“I’m sorry that I’m an asshole.”  
  
“Don’t worry,” Arthur said. “I like it. Are you sure you want all your relatives see you when you’re groping my ass?”  
  
“Look at how happy my mother looks. She’s so relieved that I’ve finally fallen in love with someone.”  
  
Arthur cleared his throat.  
  
“Hey,” Eames said, “do you know how to dance tango?”  
  
“No,” Arthur said. “No, and don’t you dare to –“  
  
“It’s easy,” Eames said and then grinned, “no, it’s not, but I’m good at it and I’ll catch you if you fall.” And then he arranged their hands and bodies again, and Arthur had a vague memory of once seeing tango in Moulin Rouge, and how he had jerked off later thinking about Ewan McGregor, and then he didn’t have time to think about anything else, because Eames was dragging him around on the floor. They definitely weren’t dancing tango. Or maybe Eames was but Arthur wasn’t, no, Arthur was trying not to fall on his face and also trying to figure out why he was having so much fun even though what they were doing was absolutely terrible. It had to have something to do which Eames, and that was bad. He was going to break his heart. Or his neck. And wasn’t that nice, because from breaking his heart or his neck, he would definitely choose his neck.  
  
“Well, that was scary,” he said later, when he was still alive and both of them were breathing heavily and not dancing anymore. Eames still had his arm around Arthur’s waist, though.  
  
“You’re smiling,” Eames said.  
  
  
**  
  
  
“There you are,” Emma said, stopping at Arthur’s side. “I agree, the chocolate cake is definitely the best.”  
  
Arthur looked at her and nodded. There wasn’t much else he could do for the moment, because he had his mouth full of the said chocolate cake.  
  
“I just wanted a second with you,” Emma said, “since we’re leaving in half an hour or something like that. God, what a day, I’m so tired I think I’m going to fall asleep the moment I get to our hotel room, and Ruby’s had a headache for hours now. Too much excitement I think, even the ibuprofen won’t beat that. So, I just wanted to say that it was so nice to meet you and I’m glad you were here today. Ruby and me, we’re going to be on our honeymoon for two weeks but I’m sure I’ll meet you later this autumn, right?”  
  
Arthur cleared his throat, looking around. He couldn’t see Eames anywhere. Ten minutes ago, Eames’ cousin Andrew had caught them and started asking questions about online poker, and Arthur had come to see if there was still some chocolate cake yet. There had been but not anymore. He still had some on his plate, though. And Emma stepped closer to him and placed her hand onto his elbow.  
  
“He always looks like he’s in a good mood,” Emma said in a quiet voice, “and I think he actually is, most of the time. But sometimes I wonder… we were all pretty lost when Dad died, and maybe we tried to cheer each other up, and I feel like… like Eames is still doing that, for everyone, all the time.” She took a deep breath. “But everyone should have someone with whom they can be sad or angry or happy or tired or whatever they are. So, I’m just very glad that he has you now.”  
  
Arthur opened his mouth.  
  
“Oh, shit, Ruby’s gesturing at me to come save her from her grandmother,” Emma said and patted Arthur on the shoulder. “I’ll see you later. Maybe in October?”  
  
Arthur nodded, and then he opened his mouth again, but Emma was already walking away. He watched as she saved Ruby from her grandmother, kissed her and pushed the strands of hair from her face. Ruby seemed tired but also she was leaning into Emma’s touch as if Emma was her anchor in the world. Or something. Something like that had been in the poem that was printed on the napkins. Eames had laughed at it, then read it again, and then sniffled a couple of times.  
  
Arthur took the rest of the chocolate cake with him and went searching for Eames. Certainly Eames had managed to tell Andrew everything about online poker by now.  
  
But when he found Eames, it wasn’t Andrew that Eames was talking to, it was his mother. They were in Eames’ father’s study, and the door was ajar so Arthur could hear their voices. The conversation seemed kind of private, though, and he was about to turn around and wait for Eames somewhere else, when he heard his own name.  
  
“Arthur seems like a very nice young man,” Eames’ mother was saying, “polite and honest and –“  
  
“Mom,” Eames cut in, his voice a little strained.  
  
Arthur bit his lip. He really wished Eames wasn’t going to tell his mother about Arthur’s career in international crime. That might have made Eames’ mother look at him differently.  
  
“Darling,” Eames’ mother said, “I know, I know, you’re an adult and you don’t need your mother to be so sentimental about these things, but it’s just… there are so many things in life that just are so difficult and hard, and it makes it so much better if you have someone to share your burdens with, and we both know you aren’t sharing anything with me or your sister, so I’m just so glad you have someone –“  
  
“ _Mom_ ,” Eames said, “I need to tell you something.”  
  
There was a short silence. Arthur could hear his own heartbeat in his ears, and from the dining hall, Eames’ grandmother’s voice as she explained to someone what kind of pictures she was getting from young men.  
  
“What is it?” Eames’ mother said, sounding a little worried now. “Are you moving to the States with him? Because I can understand that, I know it’s a difficult decision for a couple to decide where they’re going to live. But it’s alright, there’re planes, I can always come to see you, and it’s not like you’ve stayed a lot in England the past ten years either –“  
  
“It’s not that.”  
  
“No?” Eames’ mother paused. Arthur realized he was squeezing the fork in his hand but couldn’t stop. “Are you sick?”  
  
“No,” Eames said quickly, “no, nothing like that. Don’t worry. I’m alright. Everything it’s fine. It’s just, Arthur and me, we are –“  
  
“Oh my god,” Eames’ mother said, “don’t tell me you’re breaking up, he’s so lovely, and I just met him and… oh, darling, don’t look at me like that, if you both think it’s the right choice then it probably is, and you’re going to find someone else, these things always turn out fine eventually, or not always but… often. Sometimes. And to be honest, I thought something was wrong, I had a hunch, I thought you two seemed a little… like you were a little worried about each other all the time, you know? Like you didn’t completely trust each other anymore. So, I understand it. I’m just sad, because Arthur seems so lovely –“  
  
“He is,” Eames said, “he is lovely. And we aren’t breaking up, we just –“  
  
“You aren’t? Thank god, that would’ve been devastating, I don’t know how you could have ever moved on –“  
  
“Mom, can you just stop talking for a second and let me tell you?” Eames asked. He sounded nervous now, and sad, and tired, and Arthur didn’t remember if he had ever heard Eames sound like that.  
  
“Sorry,” Eames’ mother said after a short silence. “Yes, of course. Tell me.”  
  
“We aren’t really together,” Eames said.  
  
Arthur bit his lip.  
  
“What?” Eames’ mother asked. “Of course you are. Has someone been giving you some kind of homophobic bullshit? Was it your Uncle Thomas? Because if it was, I will have a talk with him, and he will be so sorry he ever –“  
  
“No,” Eames said, “no, we aren’t together, we never were. We just… We’re friends, or… colleagues. We work together.”  
  
“You work together with… online poker?”  
  
“Yes,” Eames said. “And the thing is, I knew you’d be sad that I don’t have anyone to bring with me to this wedding, and then I kind of panicked and said that I have, and then I called him and asked him to come here.”  
  
“I don’t understand,” Eames’ mother said. “What does it mean, working together with online poker? I thought you were supposed to play it alone.”  
  
“He’s not my boyfriend,” Eames said. “He’s just a guy that I know from work, and I asked him to come here and pretend to be my boyfriend, so that I could show him to everyone and you’d stop being sad about me being lonely. And he did that for me, and I don’t even know why, because who does that, who lets someone they barely know pull them into something like that, this is just… I don’t know what came into me, I was drunk and tired and I really needed you not to be disappointed at me.”  
  
“Eames –“  
  
“Sorry.”  
  
“No, you don’t need to…” Eames’ mother sighed. “I’ve never been disappointed at you, not a day in my life. Except the day when you glued your uncle Ferdinand’s shoes to the floor when he was visiting us and you didn’t want him to leave. But I also thought that was very creative.” She was quiet for a second. “Arthur’s not really your boyfriend?”  
  
“No,” Eames said.  
  
Arthur turned around and started walking. Eames was saying something else now, but he couldn’t stay and listen, and he couldn’t go to the room and let Eames know he had heard everything, and he couldn’t pretend that he hadn’t, either. He couldn’t go back to the party and then later pretend that everything was alright. And he wanted so badly for Eames to come to him and take his hand or preferably wrap his arms around his waist and pull him close and kiss him and kiss him again and tell him that he had got it all wrong, that Eames actually liked him, that Eames was in love with him and wanted to be with him and have sex with him and buy groceries with him and argue about household tasks with him and maybe get another cat one day. He wanted Eames to run after him and tell him that everything _was_ real after all.  
  
But he was thirty years old. The person who was usually disappointed at him was _he_ , he knew some facts about life, and he knew that he rarely got what he wanted. He knew that sometimes, there came a moment when it was time to count your losses and leave.  
  
He had only walked for a mile or two down the road when the taxi came. It was raining and he was soaked through, but the driver just frowned and then let him sit down in the backseat. He checked his pockets but of course he didn’t have keys. He didn’t live here, as Eames had pointed out this morning. Actually, he had nothing with him, except his phone, his wallet, and the plate of chocolate cake. The cake was a little wet from the rain but he finished eating it anyway.  
  
  
**  
  
  
The next flight to Chicago was in seven hours. Arthur didn’t think he could stay in England with Eames for another seven hours, but luckily there was a flight to Los Angeles leaving almost right away. He barely got to the flight, partly because the staff looked a little suspecting about him. But he told them how the things were: that he had come to England to pretend to be his friend’s boyfriend, and he had kind of known that he was in love with his friend but he had ignored that, and now he couldn’t ignore it anymore, and he couldn’t go home with a man who didn’t love him, and therefore he needed to go back to the States immediately. The staff looked a little confused and like they were pitying hi, and mhe hated that but got to the flight, which was the most important thing. By then, Eames had tried to call him three times and had sent him several texts, first of which were funny and the others made him want to cry. He switched off his phone to try to save what was still left of his heart.  
  
In the morning, he was in Los Angeles. He was so tired he almost fell asleep in the taxi, and Eames had tried to call him a few more times. Soon, he would call Eames and let Eames know that he was alive and well, except that he was in love with Eames and his heart was kind of irreversibly fucked, but other than that, everything was great. He would do that soon. Just not now, because if he heard Eames’ voice now, he would definitely cry. He got out of the taxi and walked to the house.  
  
“What the hell?” Dom asked, opening the front door.  
  
“Nothing,” Arthur said. “Everything’s great. I just –“  
  
“You look like someone broke your heart,” Dom said, squinting at him. “Was it Eames? I thought there was something going on, you know, because he’s always texting you about how good your ass looks. And yeah, I know I’m not supposed to know, but I was worried, so I checked your phone once when you were taking a shower. Did you notice that Eames can’t spell?”  
  
“Dom,” he started, and then tried to add something but didn’t know what.  
  
“Come in,” Dom said, grabbed his shoulders and pulled him into the house. “I’ll make you coffee and you can tell me everything.” He paused. “Or I could just check your phone.”  
  
“Dom –“  
  
“Yeah, I know, I’m not supposed to do that.” Dom squeezed his shoulder. “Was it Eames?”  
  
“Yeah,” Arthur said, “yeah, it was Eames.” He kind of felt like he was lying, though. He was pretty sure he had broken his own heart when he had let himself believe it all might be true.


	7. Lose the Game, Win the Heart

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> _"Kiss now, fuck later."_

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Oh guys we're almost there!

Arthur was having second breakfast with Dom when Dom’s phone rang. Dom took the phone and squinted fiercely before answering.  
  
“Hello, Eames,” Dom said pointedly and then was quiet for a few seconds. “Why would I know where Arthur is? What have you done to him?” He paused. Arthur squeezed his cup of coffee. “Yeah, he’s my best friend, but even if he was sitting in my kitchen right now, I wouldn’t tell you where he… Yeah, no, I wouldn’t let you talk to him. If he doesn’t answer your calls, he clearly doesn’t want to talk to you, and… What?” Dom glanced at Arthur. “You did what?” A pause. “He did what?” Another pause. “You and Arthur did _what?_ Are you _sure?_ And… What did you say? Yes, he likes cats. But… alright, but… _okay,_ but… No, I’m not going to let you talk to him, and also he’s not here. Goodbye, Eames.”  
  
And then Dom hung up, looking very happy about himself and also a little confused. “I didn’t tell him that you’re here,” he told Arthur.  
  
“Yeah,” Arthur said slowly. “What did he say?”  
  
“Well, he said that you left all your suits in his house, and that he’s sorry even though he doesn’t know about what, and the cat misses you.” Dom paused. “And he also said that he’s coming to Chicago in two days for an online poker tournament, and that he’s going to find out where you live and knock on your door in case you’d let him stay at your place, because it’s not like he’s rich or something.” Dom bit his lip. “Funny. I always thought Eames was rich. He hinted at that sometimes. Like, once we were drunk and talking about money, and he said _‘Dom, I’m ridiculously rich’_.”  
  
Arthur cleared his throat. “He’s coming to Chicago in two days?”  
  
“Yeah,” Dom said, looking at him. “You really like him.”  
  
“Yeah.”  
  
“That’s bad.”  
  
“Yeah,” Arthur said and drank more of his coffee.  
  
“But I think,” Dom said slowly, “I think it’s nice that he promised to bring your suits.”  
  
“Yeah,” Arthur said, trying not to think about how nice it was that Eames had promised to bring him his suits.  
  
“There’s just one thing that seems a little weird to me,” Dom said, squinting at him.  
  
He held his breath. He was a little surprised that he had managed to stay at Dom’s house for almost six hours until Dom had thought to ask him what exactly had happened. He knew that Dom would be a little shocked when he would say that he had been pretending to be Eames’ boyfriend and met Eames’ family and had sex with Eames and danced tango, but that couldn’t be avoided anymore.  
  
“Why is the online poker tournament in Chicago, if it’s online?” Dom asked.  
  
  
**  
  
  
“Arthur,” said Philippa, “why are you leaving?”  
  
“Yeah, Arthur,” said James, “why are you leaving?”  
  
“You just came here today,” said Philippa.  
  
“Yeah, you just came here today,” said James.  
  
“And you promised to take us to the movies,” said Philippa.  
  
“Yeah, Dad said that you promised to take us to the movies,” said James.  
  
“Really?” Arthur said, glancing at Dom. Dom shrugged. Arthur turned back to the kids, who were sitting on the sofa with him. They all were supposed to be watching a cartoon in which a headless chicken ran round and round, but Dom was doing something on his computer, the kids seemed to have taken it as a personal insult that Arthur was leaving, and Arthur was panicking about what he would say to Eames when he would see him. He had already called a taxi to take him to the airport. It should come in ten minutes. And he had packed, only he didn’t have any luggage, so what he had done was that he had put his phone and wallet into his pockets.  
  
Maybe it was for the best that none of them was watching the cartoon, though. It seemed disturbingly violent.  
  
“I’m going to take you to the movies the next time I’m here,” Arthur said.  
  
The kids stared at him as if they suspected he was lying at their face. They kind of had a reason to, because their father had recently been on a ‘work trip’ for two years. Arthur bit his lip and tried not think about having come to Dom’s house for the first time after the Fischer job, and how Philippa and James had still remembered who he was but had looked at him as if they thought he was a ghost. It had broken his heart a little, so he couldn’t start to imagine the state Dom’s heart was in.  
  
“I’m sorry,” he said as genuinely as he could, but these kids had heard that a lot from their father, so he wasn’t expecting much. “I really need to go.”  
  
“Arthur’s going to go to see his boyfriend,” Dom said to the computer.  
  
Arthur turned to look at him. The kids turned to look at him as well. “Dom, what the –“  
  
“Arthur has a boyfriend?” Philippa said. “What? How? How? When? Why?”  
  
“Arthur has a boyfriend?” James said. “Arthur has a boyfriend! Arthur has a boyfriend! Arthur has a boyfriend!”  
  
“Oh my god,” Arthur said.  
  
“Yeah,” Dom said slowly, squinting at the computer, “I’ve been thinking about this since he called me this morning. It kind of sounded like you had been staying at his place in London for a while and he had taken you on a date, and also you had met his whole family.”  
  
“Yes,” Arthur said, “but not like that.”  
  
“Not like what?”  
  
“Not like…” He took a deep breath. He wanted to say that he hadn’t meant it, but of course he had. “He doesn’t like me that way.”  
  
“Really,” Dom said, looking thoughtful, “because it didn’t sound like that to me. It sounded like he actually likes you a lot.”  
  
“Yeah, I know,” Arthur said. “But it’s not real.”  
  
Dom turned to look at him. “How do you know?”  
  
Arthur looked at Dom. Then he looked at the kids. Then he looked at the picture of Mal on the dresser. Then he looked back at Dom again.  
  
“I’m just trying to say,” Dom said, looking very uncomfortable, “that I’m not saying that you two should be together, nothing like that, I’m not even saying that you’d make a good couple, because I kind of think he’s clever and funny and you, on the other hand, are the second best person I have ever met and the best friend I could ever have.”  
  
Arthur bit his lip. “Dom –“  
  
“So, you’re a little bit better than him,” Dom said. “But also I kind of think that you’re lonely, and that maybe you’ve liked him for a long time. You remember when we were… on that very long business trip together? For two years?”  
  
“Yeah,” Arthur said slowly, “I remember.”  
  
“You always knew where Eames was,” Dom said. “Always. I don’t know how you did it, or why. Or actually, I think I know _why._ ”  
  
“I was tracking his phones. All of them.”  
  
Dom stared at him.  
  
“Maybe I shouldn’t talk about it,” Arthur said, pointing at the kids. “It’s kind of illegal. First, I hacked into –“  
  
“I don’t care how you did it,” Dom said and then blinked, “okay, of course I care, but that’s not important now. What’s important is why you did it. And I don’t think we have time to talk about that either, because your taxi is here at any second.”  
  
Arthur cleared his throat. “I like him.”  
  
“I _knew_ it,” Dom said, sounding thoroughly shocked. “We should talk about this later. Your taste in men –“  
  
“Dom.”  
  
Dom was shaking his head. “First you spent two years helping me even though I constantly put your life in danger, and then you fell in love with _Eames_ –“  
  
“ _Dom._ ”  
  
“I’ve been thinking,” Dom said, glancing at him, “that I don’t know if I’ve said thank you.”  
  
“Arthur!” said Philippa, pointing at the window. “Arthur and Dad! It’s a car! It’s taxi!”  
  
“It’s a taxi,” said James.  
  
“I should go,” Arthur said and stood up.  
  
“Tell him how you feel,” Dom said. “That’s the only way you’re going to have a chance with him.”  
  
Arthur bit his lip. “What if he says he doesn’t feel the same way about me?”  
  
“Then at least you know,” Dom said. “And you can always come back here. I’ll set you up with someone. I know two gay men here in Los Angeles, so you even get to choose.”  
  
“Goodbye,” Arthur said.  
  
  
**  
  
  
He called his landlord from the plane and she came to let him in and let him borrow a spare key. She was also very curious about how he had lost his keys, so he told her that he had been in England, at his boyfriend’s sister’s wedding, but there had been a family emergency in Los Angeles and he had taken a flight there and hadn’t had time to go back to his boyfriend’s flat for his keys. When he was finally in his flat, alone, he felt like he was losing a grip of what was actually true and what wasn’t. But then again, he hadn’t really slept since the night when he and Eames had had sex. That was exactly the kind of thing he shouldn’t have been thinking about, but he was too tired to fight it, so he ate a banana that had been on the counter for a week, went to bed, turned off the light and thought about having sex with Eames until he finally miraculously fell asleep.  
  
When he woke up, it was afternoon, but he wasn’t sure which day. He took a shower, got food delivered from his favorite pizzeria, called his mother, tried to work a little but couldn’t concentrate, and then went running. It was raining a little. A group of middle-aged joggers passed him and he almost collided with two golden retrievers and a man. Everything seemed to have gone back to normal, except that tomorrow, Eames was coming to Chicago.  
  
Arthur went back home, did a few additional push-ups to calm his nerves, took a very long shower, jerked off thinking about Eames’ fingers on him and, eventually, in him, watched a talk-show about local politics, and then went to bed but couldn’t fall asleep. He didn’t know if it was because of the jet lag or because he was terrified he was going to get his heart even more wrecked in less than twenty-four hours. Maybe he should have gone somewhere Eames would never find him. Like Canada. But he had always thought there was something weird about Canada, and also he really wanted his suits back.  
  
He also wanted to see Eames.  
  
He slept poorly, had a nightmare in which he was standing on the aisle with Eames, and the music was playing, and his mother was crying but probably happily, and Eames looked lovely, and every character he remembered from any Jane Austen movie was sitting in the front row. The priest asked if Eames wanted to love and cherish Arthur for the rest of his life, and Eames said that actually, this wasn’t real, this was only a dream Arthur was having, and Arthur had known it wasn’t real from the beginning. He had just let himself think that Eames actually meant it, because he wanted Eames so badly. Then suddenly they weren’t on the aisle anymore, they were in a pirate ship, the English soldiers were attacking them, but they climbed to the mast and there Eames pushed his hand into Arthur’s pants.  
  
Arthur woke up, read a book about the history of finance economy for half an hour and then got a bit more sleep before morning.  
  
  
**  
  
  
A little before midday, the buzzer rang. Arthur couldn’t make himself check if it was really Eames. If he ended up letting a hitman into the building, then at least he wouldn’t have to face Eames later today, because he would already be dead. But when someone knocked on the door of his apartment and he went to open the door, he took his gun with him. Just in case.  
  
“Hello,” Eames said. He had Arthur’s luggage and a huge backpack, and he looked exhausted.  
  
“Hi,” Arthur said, blinking. “You look terrible.”  
  
Eames grinned. “Well, thank you, darling.” Then he froze. Arthur was frozen already. He didn’t remember when was the last time that he had been so hopeful and so terrified at the same time.  
  
“So,” he said, staring at Eames, “online poker.”  
  
“Oh,” Eames said, “yeah. Yes. Online poker. In Chicago. You know how it is. Do you think…”  
  
“Yeah?”  
  
“Do you think you could let me in?”  
  
“Oh,” Arthur said and stepped away from the door. “Yeah. Of course. Come in.”  
  
“Thank you,” Eames said. “I brought your suits. And your… everything else.”  
  
“Thanks.”  
  
“No problem,” Eames said, and then he just stood there, in Arthur’s entry hallway, looking at Arthur, as if it was Arthur who was supposed to know what to do in this situation. “So, this is where you live,” Eames said after a long silence.  
  
“Yeah,” Arthur said.  
  
“Looks nice,” Eames said.  
  
“This is just the hallway.”  
  
“Ah,” Eames said. “So, there’s more.”  
  
“Yeah.”  
  
Eames frowned. “Could I –“  
  
“ _Oh,_ ” Arthur said. Shit. His brain was clearly short circuiting. “Yeah. We can go to the living room. You can sit down. Or do you want to… I have coffee, and tea, and chocolate, and I probably have alcohol too, if you want to –“  
  
“Tea would be lovely, thank you,” Eames said, dragging Arthur’s luggage and his own to the living room. “So, you weren’t lying. You actually know other colors than black and white.”  
  
Arthur nodded and escaped to the kitchen. He could hear from behind his back as Eames sat down on his sofa.  
  
“Looks nice,” Eames said. “Your flat, I mean. Looks cozy. I didn’t think you’d like cozy.”  
  
Arthur suddenly didn’t remember how to make tea.  
  
“If you don’t have tea, I’m happy to drink coffee,” Eames said from the living room, “or anything, actually. Like, if you have water, I’d be happy with that. And if you don’t, that’s fine. I don’t need anything. I just… I just thought…”  
  
“You brought me my suits,” Arthur said. He could make tea. Probably. If he concentrated.  
  
“Yeah,” Eames said. “I know how much you like them.” He was quiet for a while, while Arthur had a fight with the kettle. “Pringles misses you.”  
  
“I miss her,” Arthur said. Bloody hell, he wished he wouldn’t start crying.  
  
“Yeah,” Eames said slowly. “My place isn’t like it used to be, I mean, it’s been different since you left.”  
  
Arthur swallowed. “I’ve been away for two days.”  
  
“The longest two days of my life,” Eames said and then sighed loudly. “Sorry, that was a lie. The longest two days of my life where definitely when I was in jail in Scotland and everyone was trying to flirt with me. That was terrible.”  
  
“You’ve been in jail in –“  
  
“I was young and stupid and had a party in someone else’s castle,” Eames said. “You haven’t Googled me yet? Even though you know my name now?”  
  
Arthur shook his head.  
  
“Well, that’s worrying. Are you alright?”  
  
No, he wasn’t alright. He knew he needed to have a talk with Eames but he was too terrified to start, and also he didn’t remember how to make tea anymore. “I can’t make tea.”  
  
“Oh,” Eames said. Arthur could hear from behind his back as Eames stood up and walked to the kitchen. “ _Oh._ Don’t worry. I’ll help. I’m English, I know how to make tea. Just let me –“ He took the kettle from Arthur’s hand. Their fingers brushed against each other at the process. Arthur realized he was holding his breath only when he began to feel a little dizzy.  
  
“I heard you talking to your mother,” he said, because surely it had to be said eventually. And he felt like his heart was about to burst from how much he hoped Eames would want him after all. If he was going to be crushed, he wanted to be crushed right now, so that it wouldn’t hurt later.  
  
He could see Eames swallowing. Then he took a deep breath and watched, while Eames put the kettle on like it was the simplest thing in the world. “You heard me talking to my mother –“  
  
“At the wedding. Before I left.”  
  
Eames glanced at him.  
  
“That’s why I left,” he said. “Sorry. I should’ve let you know. That was impolite. That was –“  
  
“Hey,” Eames said, reached to him and squeezed his arm before letting go again. “Don’t worry about that. It was pretty easy to bribe a few people and find out that you had taken a flight to Los Angeles, so I only spent like maybe two hours worrying that maybe you had been kidnapped. I just want to… _why_ did you leave?”  
  
“Because I heard you talking to your mother.”  
  
“Okay,” Eames said, chewing on his lower lip. “Just… what was I saying?”  
  
“You said…” Arthur paused.  
  
Eames stared at him. He felt incredibly stupid. Also, the water was boiling.  
  
“I think the tea is –“  
  
“Fuck the tea,” Eames said. “What did I _say?_ You need to tell me, because I don’t remember. I just remember that we danced, and then I talked with Andrew about online poker, and then Mom saved me, and then I told her about you and me, and then I…” He paused. “You heard that?”  
  
Arthur nodded.  
  
“But I just… I didn’t say anything bad, I just…” Eames looked at the kettle. “I just told her the truth.”  
  
“Yeah,” Arthur said, his voice coming out thin and tired. “I know. I shouldn’t have freaked out like that. That was stupid. I knew from the beginning that we were just… that it was just… that you didn’t actually _mean_ to…”  
  
“Bloody hell,” Eames said and then took two mugs from the cupboard and poured water in them. “I really need tea now,” he said and searched through Arthur’s cupboards until he found tea bags. He gave Arthur one and shoved the other to his cup of hot water as if he was trying to drown it there. “I don’t know what’s happening here,” he said at the cup of tea.  
  
Arthur bit his lip, watching Eames’ hands.  
  
“Because it kind of sounds like…” Eames took a deep breath. “I’m sorry if I got this wrong, but it kind of sounds like maybe you’re upset because I told my mother that you had agreed to pretend to be my boyfriend.”  
  
“Yeah,” Arthur said. He was well aware that he sounded crazy.  
  
“And I’m just trying to figure out why,” Eames said, sipping his tea. “Shit, this is _hot._ ” He sipped it again. “I just couldn’t lie to her anymore,” he said. “To my mother. I hate lying to her and I do that all the time. But the wedding was so perfect, and you were perfect, and you let me kiss you and dance with you and everyone was talking about love and I was feeling a little emotional, and I thought… I just wanted to be honest. For once.”  
  
Arthur cleared his throat.  
  
“Which is kind of not my strongest suit,” Eames said, frowning at the cup of tea. “I’m kind of… pretending for a living, as you know. I think that everything is usually better if you don’t take things too seriously. So, I’m trying not to take things too seriously, and I feel like maybe I’ve kind of… forgotten how to do that. To take something seriously. I like that about you, by the way.” He glanced at Arthur. “You take everything terribly seriously all the time.”  
  
“That’s not true,” Arthur said seriously.  
  
“Come on,” Eames said, smiling at him, and he really wanted to kiss Eames. But he couldn’t, because surely he would do something wrong and then everything would go to hell and he would lose Eames for forever. “You’re taking everything seriously right now,” Eames said.  
  
“No, I’m not,” Arthur said, looking at his cup of tea.  
  
“Hey,” Eames said, his voice suddenly light, but when Arthur looked at him again, his eyes weren’t smiling. He looked almost scared. “There’s this one thing that I’ve been wondering.”  
  
“Yeah?” Arthur asked, taking a deep breath.  
  
“Why did you come?”  
  
He stared at Eames.  
  
“To London,” Eames said, sipping his tea and looking at him. “Why did you come to London when I asked you to? Because no one else would have. That’s not something people _do._ If you call someone in the middle of the night, drunk, and don’t even tell them why they should come from the other side of the world to save you, they don’t do that. They don’t take a flight from Chicago to London just because you asked.”  
  
He swallowed. He definitely wasn’t going to tell Eames that he was in love with him. That would only make things terribly awkward, if it turned out that Eames wouldn’t feel the same way.  
  
“Why did you come, Arthur?” Eames asked. His voice wasn’t so light anymore.  
  
“I’m in love with you,” Arthur said.  
  
  
**  
  
  
“You’re in love with me,” Eames said slowly. They were sitting on the sofa now. Arthur wasn’t exactly sure how they had gotten there or why he was drinking his tea when it was obviously still too hot to drink, but he needed something to do so that he wouldn’t stare at Eames, because Eames was also too hot.  
  
He took another sip of his tea and burned his tongue. The silence felt stretched. The only things Eames had been saying for the past minute were ‘can we sit down’ and ‘you’re in love with me’, and Arthur hadn’t said anything and probably never would again.  
  
“You’re in _love_ with me,” Eames said at his cup of tea. “You’re in love with _me,_ Arthur.”  
  
Arthur rubbed the side of his nose. Yes, this was embarrassing.  
  
“And you aren’t even joking,” Eames said, turning to look at him. “ _Bloody fucking hell_.”  
  
“Yeah,” he said, his voice coming out about as brave as once in a dream when an unreasonably violent projection had threatened to rip his legs off.  
  
“You really aren’t joking.”  
  
“I don’t really joke much,” he said and cleared his throat. “But, no.”  
  
“You’re in _love with me_ ,” Eames said. “Did you just realize it, or…”  
  
“No,” Arthur said. Surely there was no reason to hold back now. He was going to be either very happy or totally devastated anyway. “No, I’ve kind of known I’m in love with you. I mean… I wouldn’t have called it _love_ , I just… I’ve liked you that way for a very long time.”  
  
“Like… years?”  
  
“Yeah.”  
  
“And I’ve been sending you drunk texts about your ass,” Eames said.  
  
Arthur rubbed his forehead.  
  
“I kind of thought…” Eames paused and sighed. “I thought there was _something_ , that maybe you thought I was hot or something like that, but it seemed like a bad idea to start something casual, since we’re often working together, and those kind of things just… usually go wrong in one way or another. And I was never sure.”  
  
“I was very much trying to hide it.”  
  
“Well, that makes sense,” Eames said. “But then you came to London for me and agreed to play my boyfriend and… and you went on a date with me and kissed me and slept with me and all that. And in the wedding… I thought that maybe you liked me after all.”  
  
Arthur almost laughed out loud.  
  
“I wanted to take a chance,” Eames said in a quiet voice. “With you. I wanted to be serious and tell you about how I felt and maybe start something… real. That’s why I told my mother. Because I didn’t want to pretend anymore.”  
  
Arthur bit his lip. “ _Fuck._ ”  
  
“Yeah.”  
  
“You said we aren’t even friends.”  
  
“Yeah,” Eames said slowly, “but it’s true, isn’t it? We aren’t exactly friends. But we could be…”  
  
Arthur glanced at him.  
  
“You could be my boyfriend,” Eames said, looking very serious about it.  
  
“Really?” Arthur asked.  
  
Eames nodded.  
  
“For real?”  
  
“Yeah,” Eames said. Now he was smiling a little. “I fell for you the second I saw you. And then I found out about your personality. But then I learned to know you a little better and realized that your personality is actually even better than the rest of you.”  
  
“The rest of me –“  
  
“Yeah.”  
  
“I need you to be serious with me, Eames.”  
  
“I’m trying,” Eames said, “I’m really trying, darling, it’s just that you’re sitting there, looking terribly serious and like you’re afraid that I might just, I don’t know, leave _._ And I’m not going to _leave_. I just flew from London to Chicago for an online poker tournament. It’s _online_ , dear. And I brought your luggage to you even though I probably broke my back dragging your stuff. And I’ve been sending you inappropriate texts for years like an asshole because I didn’t know what else to do. I didn’t think I could take it if I stopped joking and you’d turn me down.”  
  
“I’m not going to turn you down,” Arthur said.  
  
“Yeah, I’m beginning to realize that,” Eames said. “Do you think we could kiss now?”  
  
“You actually like me.”  
  
“Yes,” Eames said. “I like you. Can we –“  
  
“Like, you _actually_ like me. You don’t just want sex or…”  
  
“Sex _or?_ ” Eames asked but then took a deep breath and sipped his tea. “It’s not just about sex.”  
  
“Because if it is, I don’t think I can –“  
  
“Arthur,” Eames said, put the cup of tea away and took Arthur’s hand, “I’m not very good at relationships. But I promise you it’s not just about sex.” He frowned. “The sex was nice, too.”  
  
“Yeah, it was,” Arthur said. He definitely wasn’t going to start thinking about sex now.  
  
Oh, god, he was thinking about sex.  
  
“You’re blushing,” Eames said, stroking the back of Arthur’s hand with his thumb. “Is it a good sign? I hope it’s a good sign. Also, you already kind of told me that you love me, so why am I so nervous?”  
  
“I didn’t tell you that I _love you_ ,” Arthur said, his voice coming out a little breathless, “I told you I’m _in love with you._ ”  
  
“Semantics,” Eames said.  
  
“Fuck you,” Arthur said and then, in the moment of surprising braveness, he entangled his fingers with Eames’ and squeezed Eames’ hand. “Fuck _me._ ”  
  
Eames laughed but didn’t let go of his hand. “Really? Now? I haven’t slept much since you disappeared two days ago. And I had to drag all your suits across the Atlantic. It was terrible.”  
  
“I can’t believe you flew to Chicago for me,” Arthur said, but really he was still thinking about fucking.  
  
“I can’t believe you flew to London for me,” Eames said and glanced down at Arthur’s lap. “Is that your gun?”  
  
“Yes,” Arthur said. “I’m a naturally careful person.”  
  
“I brought condoms,” Eames said and placed his hands on Arthur’s thighs. “But I feel like I’m so sleep-deprived right now that anything could happen if I try to put one on. Like, I could seriously hurt my dick. You don’t want that.”  
  
“I really don’t,” Arthur said. His heart was in his throat and Eames was watching him as if they were going to kiss any second now.  
  
“So, maybe we could just kiss for now,” Eames said, chewing on his lower lip. “Kiss now, fuck later.”  
  
“Alright,” Arthur said.  
  
“Just one more thing,” Eames said, squeezing Arthur’s thigh. “Pringles was very upset when you left her so suddenly.”  
  
“I’m sorry.”  
  
“She had kind of just begun to think that maybe you’re in love with her or something. And then you just left without saying anything.”  
  
Arthur bit his lip. “Eames –“  
  
“She even cried a little. And she doesn’t really have any allergies.”  
  
“Hey,” Arthur said and rested his hand on the back of Eames’ neck, brushing his thumb against Eames’ chin. “Sorry.”  
  
“She’s sorry, too,” Eames said. “She should’ve told you that she meant all of it. Everything. She just didn’t have the guts because she thought you might leave. She’s a coward, really.”  
  
“You aren’t a _coward_ ,” Arthur said, “you’re an idiot but not a coward. I’m going to kiss you now.”  
  
  
**  
  
  
They kissed on the sofa and then on the bed. Somehow Eames’ dick ended up pressing against the crook of Arthur’s hip, and Arthur’s hand ended up in Eames’ underpants soon after that, and then Eames ended up lying flat on his back with his legs sprawled and his dick out and his eyes on Arthur, and he really looked sleep-deprived but complained until Arthur took off his own pants too, pushed his underpants down to his knees and let Eames wrap his fingers around his dick. The stuff Eames was saying didn’t make any sense. It was something about the autumn and the Queen and how he had lost considerable amount of money on online poker, and a little bit about Arthur’s dick. He only shut up after Arthur finished jerking him off.  
  
“Darling,” Eames said, when Arthur settled on the bed next to him and then covered his hand with his own, because he really didn’t want to remove Eames’ fingers from his dick but also wanted to get off right now, and Eames looked like he was about to pass out. “Dear,” Eames said, when Arthur started jerking himself off with Eames’ hand. “I should -“  
  
“Shh,” Arthur said.  
  
“Love,” Eames said, “I’m terribly sorry that I’m not much use to you now, I think I’m a little bit –“  
  
“Shut up,” Arthur said and kissed him. It was perfect, having Eames’ fingers on him and his own hand on Eames’.  
  
“I’m in love with you, too,” Eames said, sounding half-asleep. “I hope you know that.”  
  
That messed with Arthur’s rhythm a little. But he managed to pick up soon enough and came after a few more tugs, and when he unwrapped both of their fingers from his softening cock, Eames stroked his hair with his clean hand and called him _darling._ He felt sticky, exhausted, and frighteningly happy.


	8. Another Wedding

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> _"We're going to be late."_

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Here we are, here's a tiny epilogue for this story and then we're done! Thank you so much for everyone who's been reading this story and leaving comments, writing this was so fun and that's 20% because Arthur and Eames were being so lovely and 80% because you guys were <3
> 
> And let it be said in a quiet whisper that there IS a lot of wedding stuff in this story and frankly, I have a lot of mixed feelings about any piece of fiction that seems to imply getting married is A Sign of Happiness or a Successful Romance. It is not. However, I was trying to achieve a full Romantic Comedy Experience with this story, a slightly ridiculous fixation with weddings included, so here we go.
> 
> You're welcome to say hi to me on [tumblr](http://toyhto.tumblr.com) and hopefully I'll see you with the next Arthur/Eames -story!

“Hey, darling?”  
  
Arthur opened his eyes. “I’m kind of busy, Eames.”  
  
“Yeah,” Eames said, “yeah, I get that. But we’re going to be late.”  
  
“No, we are not.”  
  
“We most definitely are.”  
  
“They’ll wait for us.”  
  
“Darling –“  
  
“ _Eames._ ”  
  
“ _Arthur_ ,” Eames said in the tone that he used when he had already decided he wasn’t going to be distracted. “We don’t want to be late. That’s so impolite.”  
  
Arthur tried to take a deep breath. Eames was kind of right. One of the things Arthur had learned during this past year was that when Eames actually meant something, he was often right. It was infuriating, and also kind of hot.  
  
But right now, what Arthur needed of Eames was for Eames to ignore all the facts, because the facts were that they would be late, and everyone would be waiting, and Arthur absolutely hated keeping someone waiting, _especially_ everyone he knew and cared about.  
  
“ _Darling_ ,” Eames said in a very frustrated and a little breathless voice, “ _please_ –“  
  
Arthur took a better grip of the headboard. The hotel bed was surprisingly good. “Just a _minute_.”  
  
“Arthur,” Eames said, blinking rapidly, “I need you to ask me to get my fingers on your dick _right now_ or else your mother’s going to be angry at me later.”  
  
“She won’t be,” Arthur said and then let out something that might have been a moan, but Eames wasn’t in any position to comment the noises Arthur was making. And no, Arthur’s mother wouldn’t be angry at Eames, because she liked Eames much more than would have been sensible.  
  
“Was that a moan?”  
  
“No,” he said. “Eames, it doesn’t matter if we’re late, just keep on –“  
  
“ _Arthur_ , for fuck’s –“  
  
“Can’t you just fuck me?”  
  
“I _am_ fucking you,” Eames said, fucking him. His face was flushed and he was sweating and his hair was a mess, because Arthur had pushed his fingers into it a moment ago, before Eames had started to push into him so determinedly he had grabbed the headboard instead. “Let me touch your dick, Arthur, we’ve got to be ready in an hour and I’m going to need a shower and –“  
  
“Not _yet._ ”  
  
“We can do this again in the evening. I can do this again. I’ll be as slow as you want me to, just… let me…”  
  
“I’m going to be _exhausted_ in the evening,” Arthur said. “You know I don’t like parties.”  
  
Eames stared at him. “But surely this is different.”  
  
“Different how?”  
  
“Arthur,” Eames said, pushing into him so hard he hit his elbow against the headboard, “this is our _wedding._ ”  
  
“I _know_ ,” he said, panting. “I know, I just… _alright._ ”  
  
“Alright?”  
  
“Yeah.”  
  
“Darling –“  
  
“Touch me,” he said, crooking his legs and pressing his heels against Eames’ back as Eames’ dick brushed against his prostate again.  
  
“Yeah?”  
  
“Yeah. Just touch me. Do it. I can’t –“  
  
“What do you say?” Eames asked, sounding ridiculously smug and also like he was about to come in any second. Arthur couldn’t believe he had fallen for this man and was about to get married.  
  
“Please,” he said. Eames took his cock in his hand and tugged a few times, and he came with Eames’ dick buried deep in his ass and Eames’ hands reaching to pet his face.  
  
  
**  
  
  
They were five minutes late. Everyone was already there, waiting. Arthur’s mother was sitting in the front row and she already looked worried, as if she thought Arthur might bail.  
  
Oh, god, they definitely should have saved the sex for the evening.  
  
“We should’ve saved the sex for the evening,” Eames whispered, leaning closer to him. “I think your mother looks angry.”  
  
“Well, they don’t know why we are late,” he said.  
  
“Are you sure? Because you kind of look like you got thoroughly fucked five minutes ago.”  
  
“It was an hour ago,” Arthur said and kicked Eames in the leg. Then he took a deep breath. The music was already playing. The place looked lovely. And people looked – well, they looked like they were waiting for Eames and Arthur. Eames’ mother was crying, Emma and Ruby were whispering to each other, Naomi was holding Pringles in her lap, and Eames’ grandmother was frowning at her phone. Sophie and Michelle still looked a little surprised, like a month ago when Arthur had told them that he was with someone and was going to get married in less than thirty days and the wedding was going to be in England and he very much wanted his sisters to be there. Mom looked like she was about to get up and go looking for Arthur and Eames. And of course Dom was there with James and Philippa, and Ariadne was there, and Yusuf. Saito had sent his best regards and enough money to buy a house or, like Eames had pointed out, another racehorse.  
  
“Hey,” Eames said, putting his hand on the low of Arthur’s back. “Are you alright? You look worried.”  
  
“Yeah,” Arthur said, turning to Eames. He was worried. But another one of the things he had learned during this past year was that he would rather be worried with Eames than without Eames. “I think we’re going to be fine.”  
  
“I think so too,” Eames said, leaned closer to him and kissed him. “I think we should get there, or else they’re going to think that we’re late because we started fucking when we were supposed to be getting ready.”  
  
“Yeah,” Arthur said and took Eames’ hand. “Let’s get married.”


End file.
